


Hungry Like The Wolf

by Kayasurin



Series: The White Wolf [4]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Inspired by Patricia Briggs, M/M, Mentions of Death, TW: suicidal thoughts, The woods are a dangerous place, Violence, Werewolves, Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8829634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: Something vicious is stalking the woods, even as the world at large suddenly believes - knows - werewolves are real. A new Beast of Gevaudan has claimed Burgess for its own, and no one is safe.Meanwhile, Jack and Bunny are dealing with the fallout from the year without Easter.





	1. Prologue - Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

It was fitting that the weapon would be formed here. Formed and forged, and then set upon its target with the fury of a hundred, a _thousand_ hungry monsters.

More subtle than Hekla, the gateway to Hell... or Hel the Underworld, in the local tongue. Less well known, at least. But deadly, oh yes, and it hungered. Let Hekla snarl and rage and vent her fury at the world, Eyjafjallajökull was content to wait. Ice covered its slopes, pressed down on the heat within, but ice alone could not quell the volcano's fury.

Let the mortals study Katla, send their instruments and their scientists to poke and prod and pry. Eyjafjallajökull would take them, burn them, devour them. Melt the ice and boil the seas. The earth would become ash, become dust, become smothered under the weighty blanket of Eyjafjallajökull's breathing.

Sand the colour of burnt blood crunched underfoot. He thought he could _feel_ the volcano's notice, weighty and distant. Not so awake as Hekla, not as aware; humans thought less on her quieter sibling and so there was little power available.

But what power there was, was _fear_. Humans _knew_ what happened when fire met ice. And there was so _much_ fire within Eyjafjallajökull's belly, so _much_ ice coating the slopes.

Bad form, Jack. Glaciers and volcanoes were a bad mix. Oops!

It was like a fine wine, aged in the years since fur-wearing barbarians watched the volcano smoke and whispered stories over the campfire. _Fenrir_ and _Hella_ became _fire_ and _death_ , in turn to become _seismic activity_ and _pyroclastic flow_. Adults planned escape routes and children dreamt of fire reaching for them, and it all weighed sweet on his tongue.

Almost as sweet as the blood dripping from his fingers. The bitch had been caught in a trap, desperate enough to chew at her wrist to get free, but too exhausted, too starved, to so much as raise her head. They said death was a mercy, but she hadn't thought so; fear had led her to struggle, even like that, until the last moment.

And then, ah _then_ , he had found the pups. Tiny, squirming, blind things, as starved as their mother-bitch had been. Still enough strength to cry desperately for nourishment, for warmth, for -

His steps hesitated. Puppies. Small and round, eyes and ears still sealed shut. _Fluffy_ , even.

No matter. They would have died without their mother anyways. Small things always did.

_Sometimes,_ a voice that wasn't a voice whispered, _it's their fathers they need._

Eyjafjallajökull. Eyjafjallajökull the merciless, the destroyer, the secret stronghold of darkness. Eyjafjallajökull his destination, the source and the center and the repository of all the fear in this country, of people flying over it or sailing around it. Eyjafjallajökull was what mattered.

He continued walking.

The pathway was not steep. Steep was for other volcanoes. Eyjafjallajökull sprawled, spread its bulk out and laid claim to the space. It made for an easy walk, at the very least.

Halfway up the slope, there was a cave. Human eyes would have glanced over it, momentary curiosity satisfied with a peek inside. It would have appeared shallow, to them.

He, however, saw it clearly.

The entrance was small; he had to stoop, and remained crouched over once inside. But it was not shallow, this cave. The entrance became a tunnel, which wound in and down, becoming dark as a starless night with the first twist. That was no matter to _him_ , of course.

On he went, able to straighten up the lower the tunnel got. Phantom colours and shapes with no meaning or source danced in front of his eyes, his brain trying - as all brains did - to obtain some sort of information from his eyes. And failing. He had senses more sure, more trustworthy than mere sight, and so continued without hesitation.

_Orthros_ , he thought, the hound of Geryon. _Garm_ , the wolf guarding Hel. _Fenrir_ , fated to kill Odin, who bit the hand off Tyr. _Sköll_ and _Hati_ , fated to consume the sun and moon. _The big bad wolf_ that stared in so many children's tales, and made the little brats afraid to go into the forest.

The Beast of Gévaudan. Jean-Baptiste the wolf. Lobo and his pack. Three Toes of Harding county. The Wolf of Ansbach. The wolf of Sarlat. There was no end to the number of wolves, real and imagined, that had terrorized and terrified humans.

Whatever the wolves had been in life, in death they became more. Monsters. As monstrous as that _one_ , that _werewolf_. Neither beast nor man... Oh how that rankled. More, that the beast _protected_ instead of hunted.

It was enough to make the blood _boil_ with rage.

Jack Frost. Even the _thought_ of the name was enough to make his pulse quicken, his fists clench and his teeth grind together. How _dare_ that **_creature_** defy fear? The natural order of things!

Fear ruled over everything else.

_He_ ruled... was supposed to rule...

Deeper he traveled. The air was thick with heat, now. Perfect, for a plot against a winter spirit. _The white wolf of winter_ , bah! Let the white wolf meet black, and see who was swallowed up! Defiance only served so long, after all.

At last, he reached the chamber.

There was no light, but he could see clearly. The chamber formed a near-perfect sphere, the walls smooth, perfect obsidian that would shine if there was only a spark to reflect. The floor was perfectly flat, a walkway to the center of the space, where hulked a... well.

Altar was not the right word, but neither was growth. Obelisk, perhaps, fallen lengthwise, but even that was not correct. It grew up out of the floor, but was too perfectly shaped to be natural.

The air, hot and dry and so very, very thick with poisons to fell a man, flexed and wrapped around him, the caress like a blow. The blow like a caress. The room _pulsed_ with the power of fear, the distilled terror ( _belief_ , the not-voice whispered, _it is all belief in the end_ ) reacting to him with, it might be said, a kind of glee.

Here he was, a being fit to shape and wield the horrific might within this sphere, this volcano. Here he was, with strength and will to direct the power, to - what? Set off the volcano? Oh, so tempting, but... he had greater plans, yes indeed.

So to the darkness he turned his will. Memories of wolves, and the blood of wolves, and the hatred of wolves.

The _fear_ of wolves.

Even darkness was sucked into a black hole. So too was the darkness drawn into the form taking shape on the dark altar. Fear solidified it, coated it, flowed through the mockery of veins. The creature took a breath, and on the exhale came images. The hunt. The capture. Blood and pain and death. The only escape to run, and that not an escape at all.

Nothing escaped the big, bad wolf.

As eyes darker than the obsidian surrounding him opened, Pitch had half a second to reconsider his plan.

And the wolf struck.

Strangely, the last thing to run through his mind wasn't fear, or rage. It wasn't thoughts of Jack Frost, who'd ruined _everything_. It wasn't his creation, and it wasn't the mountain, and it wasn't the fear that made him cringe away.

It was the puppies. Those puppies. And how light and fragile they'd felt in his hands.


	2. Chapter One

_"Puppies,"_ Silver demanded. He shifted restlessly in the back of Jack's mind, red eyes more of a sensation than anything. _"Our rabbit with big, dumb belly. Hours and hours of_ so boring _. Puppies."_

Jack sighed, and then sighed again, this time with a plume of white breath to mark the occasion. "You're obsessed with those things."

_"Small. Cute. Fluffy. Not forever. Enjoy now."_

The more basic Silver's speech got, the more he wanted... whatever it was he wanted. Right now, puppies. Usually, to annoy Jack into agreeing to whatever; stalking Bunny, stalking some rogue werewolf in North America, killing some rogue werewolf with some out-of-season cold...

But he was right, too. Bunny was talking with North, and he'd be at the Workshop for at least an hour, probably closer to four. Time to duck across the glaciers and head into Iceland, visit the zoo. And the wolf puppies. Some good Samaritan had dropped them off, five bundles of fluff and malnutrition. Best guess was that mom had run afoul of a car or something. Now that the puppies were on solid food... well, sort of, it was kind of mushy... the zoo's wolf pack had adopted them with glee.

_"Puppies make pack strong,"_ Silver pointed out, all but purring. _"Purpose. Direction. Future."_

Fair enough. "Think that's why most werewolf packs implode?" he asked, turning away from the Workshop. Granted, Silver's opinions pretty much echoed Jack's, they only differed in degrees, but Silver was the one who understood their instincts better.

Silver considered the question as they flew, ice and snow whipping by underneath them. _"Yes,"_ Silver finally said. _"No puppies to protect. But, broken inside. Wolf kill everything, even puppies. Dumb, never taught. Head wolf not father."_

Jack made a face as Silver growled, and nodded. "No kidding." He paused, and mentally stomped on Silver's bloody thought-trail. "We still can't kill him. He's a crappy boss, but he's better than nothing."

Even if the dumbass _was_ stupid enough to live in Montana. It'd be easy... but wolves without a leader tended to go to war with each other, and one head-honcho for North America kept the various packs from making trouble for humans. And since said dumbass wasn't like his second son and couldn't see spirits, Jack wasn't going to go upset any apple carts by being his usual, 'you can't boss me around' self.

Even if the dominant werewolf really needed someone to beat him over the head with his own, stupid self. Maybe another 'impossible to boss' werewolf would show up, join the pack... What'd they call 'em, Omegas? Dumb term, but easier to throw around than 'you can't boss me around'...

The musing had brought him across the ocean and to the northernmost shores of Iceland. Jack dropped down, and followed the coastline to Reykjavik and its Family park and Zoo. Best as he could tell, Iceland was completely free of werewolves, other than the odd visit or two.

He drifted over to the wolf enclosure, and perched on one tall support for the fence. It must have been a school day or something; the crowds were thin, mostly adults and really small kids, and the main crowd - such as it was - was over towards the petting zoo and things. It left Jack all but alone with the wolves.

The five puppies aside, there were seven wolves in the Reykjavik pack. They were all, like in natural packs, related in some fashion. The chief male was also the smallest of the pack, his leading lady almost twice his size. Jack was pretty sure the second giant in the pack was the chief female's sibling - brother or sister, he wasn't sure - and the other four were their pups, mostly grown. As for the puppies...

He giggled at the sight of five wrestling balls of fluff, and the chief male who'd abandoned all of his dubious dignity to play with them. The puppies were winning.

_"Good leader,"_ Silver purred, settling in the back of Jack's mind with a happy sigh.

The adult wolves were well aware of  him. They all, one at a time, took a moment to stare at him on his perch. Jack was careful not to stare back too obviously, or look too long at the puppies while the adults checked him up. Humans might not have a clue he was around, but the animals knew. They either recognized another predator... or freaked out, what with being prey.

He did his best to avoid the deer, birds, and anything else that might be on a wolf's diet.

Jack stayed until the wolves were ushered away from the viewing area with lunch. Then he launched back up into the air.

Silver gave the impression of cracking one eye open. _"Now what?"_ he asked, feeling much calmer.

That was the question, wasn't it? Jack growled, and swiped one hand at a looming cloud. A gust of wind thwarted it's forward momentum, and then further gusts began to disperse it. The wolf in the back of his mind stayed silent, though his disapproval was clear.

"I don't know," Jack finally spat, and came to a hover in midair. "I don't - it's not -"

It was _complicated_ , is what it was. And Silver knew it, too, the ratty bag of bones. It wasn't just the squirming embarrassment and shame, every time he thought about - about spending time with 'Joey', the things he'd said, things he'd done. He'd thought the ball of fluff had been Bunny's toddler son, not Bunny himself, so he hadn't censored anything.

In a way, Bunny's clear appreciation of Jack, after Easter, only made things worse. Bunny might not have meant to, but he'd been spying on Jack, and even if he'd liked what he'd seen, it still made things very... uneven. He knew what seemed to be everything about Jack, while Jack only knew Bunny was cute when he was grumpy, attractive when he was happy, and a Pooka, with no others of his kind around.

Then add in the way he'd left, the impression he must have made...

Jack shoved all that at Silver, and flew off again. Bunny would be leaving North's by now. He wanted to catch up.

He wasn't sure why he was stalking the Pooka. Well, he knew why, but his logic, even in his own mind, was... twisty.

Bunny had seen him when he was unguarded, unaware. Jack had started the whole stalking thing to try and even the playing field.

And, well... Bunny was amazing, and a surprisingly effective fighter, but he refused to watch his back. Someone had to. Might as well be the werewolf.

* * *

The caves were empty, all the scents months old. Aster hadn't much expected otherwise, though he'd hoped...

He looked at the forlorn pile of worn comic books, dog-eared and battered despite Jack's illiteracy. Down and to the side was a second cave, one that didn't have a small collection of belongings. He'd checked, but the gore hadn't been renewed since Easter. It could mean Jack was no longer suffering through monthly, failed transformations... but he highly doubted it.

Which meant Jack was away from his shelter during full moons. Alone, unsheltered... easy prey for anyone who wanted to hurt him. Aster could hardly be the only spirit who feared werewolves, though he'd come to trust Jack.

If someone - if Jack, during a full moon, if he was found, if that person realized, they - then -

He shook the fear off like water from his fur. There'd been enough breezes with Jack's scent on him; the winter spirit was still alive. Aster had to assume he was fine.

But he'd keep looking. He had to.

This... this was his fault.

* * *

Another day, another stalking.

Jack stayed up among the clouds, one eye on the sky and the other on the gray dot moving around far below. Bunny seemed determined to search all of the Rocky Mountains, from southern point to northern. Not so bad for someone who could fly, but a lot of the terrain was more up and down than anything, so Bunny had to spend time climbing, and then jumping down.

If Bunny had known how panicked Jack had been, first time he'd seen the Pooka take a jump... Well. Silver had dropped them five hundred feet in two seconds, before they'd realized Bunny was just fine. His heart still lurched every time Bunny took the fast way off a cliff, but he managed to stay out of sight.

He wasn't sure he _wanted_ to stay out of sight. Twisting shame and embarrassment aside, he wanted... something. Bunny had been small and mute, but he'd been company, someone he could communicate with. Sort of. The company had been undemanding, the physical contact soothing an ache he hadn't been aware of, and then the flirting after Easter had been something else.

On the other hand, the way he'd taken off after Easter had to have ruined the flirting, at least. Sure, Bunny was looking for him now, but Jack doubted it was for more flirting.

Below, the Pooka dropped into a pocket valley and out of sight. Jack huffed, and flew down out of the clouds. It'd take some fancy flying, but he could probably get close enough to keep an eye on Bunny, and then duck out of sight before the Pooka saw him.

Finding a good vantage point took longer than Jack liked. The valley was long and narrow, twisting between two mountains. The sides were steep, enough that he could see why it'd been untouched by humans; it would've been more trouble than it had to be worth to build down there. In the winter, the snowdrifts had to reach heights of fifteen, maybe as much as twenty feet.

At the moment, on the cusp of summer, there was no snow. But even hovering above the valley Jack could tell it was almost a full ten degrees Celsius lower in the valley than up in the mountains. The valley was densely wooded. Somewhere in there, Bunny was looking for him.

Pooka apparently had the same problem as humans. Jack could count on one hand the number of times Bunny had looked _up_. And he knew Jack could fly!

His wolf huffed, uneasy as the seconds ticked by and Bunny didn't reappear. Jack went so far as to drop down on the mountain slope, loose stones turning under his sudden weight. He prowled closer to the drop off into the valley, and stared down into the twilight forest.

"Crikey!"

Jack launched himself down and forward, barrelling through the tree branches without a care for the holes torn into his shirt, pants, and hide. Bunny had yelled. Trouble?

He didn't know.

The ground was a _lot_ closer than he'd thought.

There were twin yelps at his impact; Bunny, and a lower, hoarse sound. Jack pushed up onto all fours, and looked over at the source of the second sound.

... Grizzly bear. With cubs. Jack blinked, and then growled. The bear growled back, cubs scurrying to hide behind their mother. The bear broke the standoff first, dropping down and backing away, teeth bared.

As soon as a tree was between him and the bear, she turned and ran, cubs at her heels.

"Well," Jack said, and rolled over. Bunny stared down at him, eyes wide and mouth open. "Score one for being a scary werewolf."

* * *

Strangling a werewolf was probably an exercise in futility. But he really, really wanted to. "I've been looking for you for months!"

Jack blinked up at him, teeth showing in a crooked grin. "Yeah. I've been watching you for months."

Watching him for - "Jack!"

Innocent blue eyes blinked up at him. "What? I'm a werewolf. Stalking is what I _do_." He stood up, old leaves falling from his hair and shoulders. Nothing stuck; Aster wondered why for half a second, before dismissing it as unimportant. "Anyways, you shouldn't be too upset, I didn't do the second half of what werewolves do. Do Pooka have werewolves?"

"Yes." Aster huffed, and reached over to brush at Jack's shoulders. The young man jumped a little, and then pressed into the contact. "Why... Why wouldn't you...?"

Jack tilted his head from side to side, for all the world like a dog trying to triangulate in on a strange sound. "Gonna need more words there, fluffy."

Aster grabbed a handful of sweater, and only then did he close his eyes and rub his forehead. When he checked, Jack seemed more amused than anything, staring down at Aster's fist, lips curved into a smile.

"Let's get outta the trees before we continue this, yeah? And don't run off!"

Jack patted his wrist. "Want me to carry you?"

Aster flattened his ears. "Buckley's chance. Follow me."

He turned and ran for the nearer of the two mountains. Even at speed, he caught Jack's yelp, and then felt the wind teasing at his heels. Well, at least Jack wasn't leaving, for now. It was simple enough to jump up out of the valley, going from scraggling tree-trunk to boulder to the top of a short cliff. He settled down, legs dangling over the side of the cliff, and turned to look at Jack.

The werewolf frowned at him, and then shrugged. Where Aster had chosen to sit more like a human - in retrospect, not one of his better ideas, the stone was cold and his tail was gonna be numb, he just knew it - Jack chose to crouch over. His hands would've been either brushing the ground or flat against it, except he was running his staff through his fingers, giving it the odd twirl now and again.

"So," Jack said, fingers tightening against his staff. He stared at Aster, eyes shadowed by his bangs, yet the colour still vibrantly clear. "Words?"

Considering how many words had been involved in the request, Aster was tempted to be just as verbose in return. Instead, he rolled his eyes, and kept Jack in his peripheral vision. "You've been stalking me for, what, four months now? Almost five? Why wouldn't you just drop down and _talk_ to me?"

Jack rolled his staff between his palms, eyes darkening to a dull, blood red, only to brighten back to blue. "Hey, you watched me for a year without talking, only fair to return the favour, right?" he asked. Aster supposed he was supposed to think that was actual cheer in Jack's voice. Unfortunately for the werewolf, he _had_ spent a year with Jack, so he could pick up the false note.

"I did try to communicate," he said, voice low, doing everything he could to keep from sounding accusing. Still, if Jack needed some form of vengeance - fuck, Aster hadn't been _spying_. At least, not intentionally. Not that he'd had a chance to explain, and North's so-called explanation hadn't helped, but -

"I know."

Aster looked directly at Jack, and almost, _almost_ flinched back. Blood red eyes, smouldering like dying embers, were focused entirely on _him_. Jack had gone still, even his hair untouched by the mild breeze. Part of Aster was ready, able, and urgent about getting away, far away as fast as possible. The rest -

Now was not the time to remember how Jack looked like without clothes.

"I figured it out, after I left. You were flirting. You were also trying to explain something." Jack smirked, and ducked his chin until he was staring from under his eyebrows, hair almost hiding his gaze. "And then St. North gave his explanation."

Aster sighed. "Nick... wasn't at his best. He's usually more tactful."

"Oh?" Jack tilted his head to the side, clear invitation for an explanation if Aster had ever seen one.

"Pitch's trap... Well, I'm immune to that sort of thing, but Tooth? Nick? They were trapped in nightmares, unable to wake up. He's gotten better, now, but he's still a bit leery of things." Including, of all things, _tennis shoes_. Aster really didn't want to know. North's mind was a strange and scary place.

Jack appeared to consider Aster's words, and then shrugged one shoulder. "You were not spying on me. I was the one who took you with me. I should not have reacted the way I did." He stopped, and stared at Aster again for several fur-crawling moments. "You have been searching for me."

"You had _broken ribs_." He swallowed, and didn't quite dare to look away. "Broken ribs, and you'd been unconscious for - you _left_ and you were _injured_."

Even as his eyes brightened back to their usual blue, Jack was blinking in what Aster had to assume was confusion. "I've been hurt before."

"And you had the Workshop to retreat to, then."

And now a smile. "Before last year. I've been a werewolf three centuries. I've been hurt... plenty of times before."

Every full moon. "That doesn't make any sense," Aster hissed. "How'd someone see you long enough to -"

"I was a werewolf before I was a spirit."

Oh. That would do it.

Jack leaned forward, balanced improbably on his toes. "I can take care of myself."

Aster flattened his ears in response, upper lip curling away from his teeth. "Been eating enough?"

"... No." Jack looked away, down into the valley. "And before you ask, no, I haven't been sleeping well."

Aster held one hand out towards the werewolf. "So why not... why not come with me? Back to the Workshop, or... Eat your fill, sleep in a clean bed...?"

He watched Jack, watched as the werewolf's eyes switched between bright blue and almost dull red, several times. Watched as Jack's expression flickered, little twitches of muscle that would have been unnoticeable, save for how _blank_ he otherwise appeared. Watched, until Jack blinked and _focused_ , as intent as a foxhound on the hunt, all of that intensity directed at Aster.

It took a few seconds, but he somehow remembered to breathe.

Jack smirked. "Food sounds like a good idea," he said.

Aster swallowed, and stood up. "Well. Let's go then."


	3. Chapter Two

The blow snapped his head to the side, cheek warming from the sudden contact. Jack blinked, his wolf shocked to stillness - not by the slap, but by the _hug_ \- and stared at Larisa's shoulder, the only thing he could really see at the moment.

"If you ever do that again," she said, pulling back, "I will hunt you down and strangle you with my garrotte."

"You have a garrotte?" he asked, still blinking.

"A useful tool for an assassin." Larisa shoved him back to arms length, and looked him over. "You are too skinny. Come. You will eat."

"I. Uh. What?" He turned to Bunny, who looked almost as surprised as Jack felt. That was no help. He turned the other way, and eyed St. North, who cleared his throat and waved his hands like he was trying to shoo sheep. As a former shepherd, Jack _knew_ what he was looking at... and he was not a sheep.

_"Technically, sheepdog,"_ Silver pointed out. And then the wolf shoved _hunger_ at Jack, so he almost staggered. Right, right, food trumped making an oblivious idiot uncomfortable...

Fortunately, no one seemed interested in talking. The yeti had set out enough food for a football team. It was like a homage to the perfect, American barbeque. Chicken wings, chicken thighs, potato salad, mashed potatoes, skewers... Jack let Silver take over for the meal. He wanted to just shove everything in his mouth and swallow. The wolf was more reasonable, and took the time to chew.

He ate long after everyone else had stopped. Even then, when he finished, there was still plenty of food on the table. Leftovers, maybe, if the yeti could rescue anything from the elves.

Jack sat back in his chair, reasonably relaxed about things. If he'd had a belt, he'd have loosened it a notch.

"Jack." St. North leaned around Larisa. "I wish to apologize for my first words to you. They were lacking in tact and subtlety. I hadn't realized..." He paused to clear his throat. "Larisa says you have no home? You must stay here! In rooms you were using before."

Jack eyed St. North, wolf just as interested, and then looked at Larisa. "I have a home."

"Your clothes are currently held together by dirt and denial," she replied. "I'll have the yeti set out some pyjamas."

He turned to Bunny. "Do I get a choice in this?"

"No."

"Fair enough."

Silver seemed absurdly happy at being told 'no'... Jack put it out of his mind, and focused on his surroundings. It helped, being in the Workshop. He'd spent months here, working with Larisa and the yeti to keep things afloat. Slept here, and ate here, and... well, the promise of a hot shower alone made him want to wag a non-existent tail.

"I assume you're tired." Larisa stood up. "I also assume you can see yourself to your room?"

"Right on both counts." Jack looked from Larisa, to St. North, and back again. "There a reason you're trying to hurry me off, though?"

She smiled. "Yes, actually. I had plans for tonight that didn't involve entertaining a werewolf. I should be able to keep them if you go to your room."

"Werewolf?" St. North stared at Jack. "You're a werewolf?"

"You didn't know?" Surely Larisa would have told him? Or Phil?

"No!"

"And it doesn't matter, because it's not a full moon." Larisa waved Jack off, and then caught St. North by the beard. "Now, I mentioned plans...?"

Jack bolted. Bunny was right beside him. "I do _not_ need to... no. Brain, just, no." Silver shuddered in reply, curling up into a disgruntled lump at the back of his mind.

"With you there," Bunny said, slowing to a fast walk once they'd rounded a second corner. "Mind if I keep you company? We still need to talk."

"I'm going to take a shower, then sure, we'll talk." The hallway was familiar, as were the yeti he passed by. They eyed him, not displeased from what he could tell, and then eyed Bunny. Now that part was... less familiar. In a way, he'd spent a lot of time with the rabbit. But in another way, it was a completely new experience to look over - and _up_ \- at gray and white fur and green eyes.

Bunny happened to look down at him at the same instant. Jack stumbled, and caught himself. That smile was... dangerous. It made  him feel warm inside. And it made Silver want to spin in circles and kill something for joy. Very dangerous. Yes.

"So..." Jack cleared his throat and did his best to speed up while at the same time not acting like he was speeding up. "What... did you want to talk about?"

Bunny smiled at him again. Threat. That was definitely a threat. To something. Whatever Bunny wanted dead. Jack would happily let Silver have full reign with killing things if it made Bunny smile more.

Wait. Bunny was talking.

"Mostly explain, properly, about last year. And maybe talk about... friendship and things?"

Friendship and things? It was fortunate they'd reached Jack's room, because 'friendship and things' deserved a laugh. Except that would be mean, he didn't want to be mean to Bunny, he just...

Shower. He needed a shower. And maybe five minutes to stop and think about things.

He left Bunny sitting on the bed, resolutely not thinking about the way Bunny had kind of, sort of... _sprawled back_. He wanted to, that was the thing; Bunny was clearly trying hard to take that step from 'cute and adorable' to 'hot as fuck'. The problem was, he was succeeding, and if Jack was going to shower in under ten minutes he needed to not think about Bunny.

His clothes quickly gave him a reason to not think about Bunny. When he tugged his shirt off, it ripped down the back, almost to the hem. His pants were similarly ragged and torn, though they could probably have been salvaged as a form of cowboy chaps, if the cowboy didn't mind his chaps being Capri-length.

Jack regarded the ruins of his clothes with a fair amount of irritation. He was used to this sort of thing, sure. As a werewolf, he typically went through at least one set of clothes per month, usually two or three sets, depending on how many fights he got into. Still, when his clothes gave up and fell apart, he usually had something waiting to replace them.

This time? Not so much.

"Hey, Bunny?" he called, gathering the tattered pieces of fabric in hand.

"Yeah?"

He cracked the bathroom door open, and held out the clothes. "Think you could get me some replacements?"

Bunny looked from the handful of torn clothes to Jack's face, and back. Jack held steady. Bunny could only see his arm and head, everything else was hidden by the bathroom door. His dignity, such as it was, was mostly intact.

He knew - he did know - that Bunny had seen him naked before. Heck, Bunny had seen him during his monthly, failed transformations, mere nudity was kind of... not an issue. Jack still hid behind the bathroom door.

Bunny stood up and sauntered across the room. Or swayed. There was - Bunny's hips were -

Silver promptly smacked that trail of thought down, before it could get any further. Quick shower first. Bunny's hips second.

"Sure thing, mate. You clean up, I'll bring you some new dags in a few."

Jack retreated back into the bathroom, and started the shower. The hot water felt good, and he bowed his head under the spray so it hit his neck at a better angle. It took a few minutes, but he eventually remembered the need to not just get wet, but wash, and grabbed a bottle of inoffensive body wash.

Halfway through, soap still on his back and legs, the bathroom door opened.

Jack froze. And then he peered through the fogged glass and nearly groaned.

"You can just leave the clothes on the counter," he suggested.

"I could do that." Bunny shut the door behind him, and leaned back against it. "Or I could wait here."

Right. That was. An option. Jack thumped his forehead against the shower tile, and took a deep breath. First, get the rest of the soap off, otherwise it'd dry and itch like crazy later. Second... well, first, soap.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long to finish rinsing off. He contemplated the shower knobs for a moment, and then twisted them off. In a few minutes, the fog on the glass would fade enough for him to be fully visible. Or he could just step outside the shower and pretend there was nothing odd going on.

At least his body was behaving. It would have been so much worse if it wasn't.

He stepped out of the shower, into the marginally cooler air, and swayed with the sudden surge of jealousy. Damp, Bunny's fur had bristled out, droplets misting over his shoulders and chest. His bright gaze flicked over Jack, hair plastered flat and ribs on full display.

Drowned rat vs. forest spirit, Jack knew how attractive he _wasn't_ , and Bunny...

... had just licked his lips?

* * *

Yes, staying in the bathroom had been a _very good idea_. Aster let his gaze rove where it would, as there wasn't a single patch of Jack's skin he wanted to leave un-admired. The winter spirit's hair, normally straight as the proverbial ruler, was curling slightly from the heat and damp. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and the way the water dripped from his hair and down his neck, following the lines and cords of muscle to Jack's chest...

And lower. Quite a bit lower.

"Enjoying the view?" Jack asked, even as he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his hips.

Why was it, the moment Jack's hips were hidden, he somehow became more alluring? Aster knew exactly where the v of muscle and bone went, but since he couldn't _see_ it, he couldn't stop staring at that edge of flesh and terrycloth. "Very much so," he purred, and managed to drag his eyes up, past Jack's stomach, flat and muscled, up past Jack's chest, and finally to Jack's eyes, narrowed in annoyance.

Well, tough. Aster was appreciating the eye candy. If it really bothered Jack, the werewolf could just say so and he'd leave.

"Is this really where you want to talk?" Jack began rubbing the towel over his arms, which pulled it away from his hips. Aster leaned back and grinned.

"Can't complain about the view, Snowflake."

Jack paused. "Snow... snowflake?" He tilted his head. "No."

"No?"

" _No_." He rubbed at his hair, and then peeked out, one blue eye glinting. "Find a better one."

So nicknames were okay, just not that one. "Snowdrop?"

Jack growled, and continued drying himself off.

Aster handed over the shirt first, and then the trousers. Dressed, Jack seemed - not happier - but calmer. And he made a good sight, with the linen poet's shirt billowing around his thin frame, the soft linen eggshell white and giving Jack's skin a bit more colour by contrast. The royal blue trousers managed to bring out the colour of Jack's eyes, and also drew the eye down to those bare feet, with their narrow heels and long toes.

He swallowed, and looked up just in time to catch a damp towel to the face.

"You're wet too," Jack grumbled. "Hurry up."

Like he was going to use a towel. Aster dropped down to all fours just long enough to shake the droplets off his fur, and then opened the door. Cool air seemed to rush in, and he shivered.

Jack brushed past him, and claimed the bed by sprawling out on it. He probably meant to look petulant, or possibly just off-putting, but he didn't. Aster didn't have to try very hard to leer, and Jack immediately sat up, knees pulled to his chest and eyes narrowed.

Aster sat down at the small table, and sighed. Right then.

"I think we should talk."


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight warning for mention of Marital Rape. No details, but it is mentioned.

Silver was smug, and Jack had no idea why. He tensed, fists gripping tight onto the furry blanket he'd curled up on. The blanket swore, and smacked his hand.

 _That_ woke him up. Jack pushed up onto hands and knees, only for the surface underneath him to buck and twist and slide out from under his hands. He tumbled onto the mattress, sheets faintly cool under his cheek, the whole thing less comfortable than the blanket.

Oh. Not a blanket. Bunny.

He grinned, amused by the grumpy expression Bunny had. "Morning."

"There a reason you tried to yank my fur out by the handful?"

What? "I what?" He patted at Bunny's side, and blinked. "Wait. Was I sleeping on you?"

"You were and it was very nice. Until you grabbed my fur and yanked." Bunny probably meant to look intimidating, but... pouting. That set to his ears was definitely pouting.

"I'm sorry." Stroking Bunny's side seemed to help. And it felt nice. All plush fur over sleek muscle. No wonder Silver was smug. Pity Jack had to react badly and ruin it. Though, Bunny was pressing into Jack's touch, so maybe things weren't as wrecked as he'd thought.

"You're forgiven. Stay in bed. I'm going to get us something to eat." Bunny glanced out the window, snorted, and started for the door.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Not a bloody clue, mate, but I'll find out."

And like that, he was gone. Temporarily, Jack knew, but -

"Stop that," he muttered, shifting to curl up, head on his knees.

Silver's question was wordless and cranky.

"Bunny's not _ours_ , not like that. And even if he were, we can't grump when he's out of sight. That way lies abusive, controlling behaviour. Like the idiot."

Marital rape was still - especially still - rape. And that so-called leader of werewolves, who locked his mate into a narrow life, shackled her to being the hated side of his leadership - fabric tore, and Jack snarled as he pulled the flannel off. He'd gouged finger-sized holes in the material across his legs. They were a little less obvious when the nightgown had been tossed onto the floor.

" _Not like that,_ " Silver protested, with a mental wrinkle of lip and flash of fang. " _Not to our rabbit. Is ours. Want to stay with him._ "

"And if he wants space?" He probably shouldn't be naked when Bunny came back. It might give the wrong idea.

" _Or right one._ " Silver quieted, thoughtful, while Jack got out of bed and moved to the wardrobe. Everything was ridiculously fancy, and he rubbed at his tight neck muscles while he searched for the least decorative of choices.

Honestly, he was a _werewolf_. There was a reason he stole his clothes out of goodwill boxes and the like. If he didn't forget about a full moon, then he wrecked this sort of thing some other way. Hunting food, hunting monsters... Unless someone came up with pants and a shirt that healed its own damage, there was really no point in looking for anything better than a pair of jeans and a sweater.

Unfortunately, there weren't any jeans in the wardrobe. There were a pair of deer hide pants, tanned dark and as soft and supple as velvet. Lack of wear aside, they looked enough like the pants Grace had made him that last autumn... He knew better, but Jack tossed the pants onto the bed all the same.

None of the shirts resembled his old clothes, so he just tossed a shirt like the white one Bunny had brought him yesterday, only in blue, after the pants. His back ached, a little, when he bent to pull the pants on, but that was nothing new.

It was only after he'd settled, dressed, at the table that Silver spoke up again.

" _I will not hurt our Bunny._ We _will not. If he wants space, we give him space. But we keep an eye on things. He is soft and adorable. What if bad things come? But it is better if he wants to be with us. Easier to protect. And all the fluffy_."

Jack sighed. "If only it were that easy." Although... Bunny _had_ been flirting. Blatantly. A lot. And, okay, so no one had ever really flirted with Jack before. Even his lover, back when he'd been mortal, hadn't flirted so much as bluntly told him that he was attracted to Jack and would like things to move to mutual, physical appreciation. But he'd seen other people flirting. He wasn't so dense he was going to miss it when Bunny showed an interest.

He didn't _understand_ it, that was a completely different thing. Still. Bunny was attracted to him. Jack...

"Cute _fluffy grump,_ " Silver cooed. So yeah, Jack was attracted right back, though it was difficult to get all over in lust when Bunny was just so adorable. Still happened, just... alongside the desire to coo and snuggle Bunny. Sex was kind of like an active snuggling, so...

"If we do this, we're gonna have to follow some rules," Jack decided. Silver grumbled, but shoved agreement at him. Good.

And that sound was Bunny at the door, so they'd figure out the rules later.

Jack mentally shoved his recent thoughts into a mental closet, and smiled at Bunny when he opened the door.

* * *

_That_ wasn't ominous or anything. Aster set a basket of Chinese dumplings down on the table, and very carefully did _not_ eye Jack suspiciously. He barely looked the werewolf's way at all. Yet he could feel Jack move closer, a brush of air against his fur, body heat radiating off the _winter spirit_ like a furnace.

Winter spirits, normally, radiated cold. So to speak. Obviously the werewolf was stronger than the winter aspect.

He jumped, when Jack stroked a hand down his back, but by the time he turned to look Jack was already investigating the basket. Aster grabbed a dumpling - a little like a spring roll, this one - before Jack could make his pick.

"There's not a lot, if this is supposed to be a meal."

More than Aster could eat in one sitting. Though, with a werewolf in the room, the basket would be nothing more than a light snack. "We woke between meals. Dinner's in a few hours."

"I'm not that hungry." Jack shoved an entire dumpling into his mouth. He made to swallow, but then caught sight of Aster's horrified stare. The werewolf immediately chewed twice, and _then_ swallowed. "I mean, comparatively."

"Mate. Jack." Wait, no. "Mate. Don't choke."

"Not gonna choke."

Aster focused on getting enough dumplings to ease his stomach. It wasn't difficult, exactly; if Jack saw him reaching for the basket, he waited for Aster to take his pick. It was just that, well, Jack took three or four dumplings at a time. _And_ most of his focus was on the food, so sometimes Jack just didn't seem to see Aster's hand.

Once the food had been finished off, Jack took the basket before Aster could, and left it outside the door. Done, he stood, fidgeting, for a full two minutes, before whirling and staring at Aster.

Fortunately, he had experience _acting_ unconcerned, even though his pulse had immediately jumped with Jack's movement. At least it wasn't like his entire military career, Aster comforted himself. It certainly wasn't fear that had gotten the adrenaline pumping.

"We need to talk." Jack wrinkled his nose, and before Aster's heart could drop more than two metaphorical inches, added, "It's a good talk."

"We having this talk with you by the door?"

"Oh. No."

They relocated to the bed. Aster had intended to stay at the table, but Jack had flopped down and waved him over, and if it was a good talk, it could only be improved with cuddling. As it happened, he was right; Jack was a little too bony to make a good pillow, but he was warm and smelt - well, after the past year, like safety.

"Okay, don't get huffy, but you're adorable."

Aster shoved his nose under Jack's arm, and clenched his eyes shut.

"So, about the whole... flirting thing you've been doing." Jack shifted, and relaxed. "It was freaking me out a little, and I finally figured out why."

It'd been what? Aster lifted his head. "Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, mate."

"Nah. It's okay. It's just..." The faintest hint of pink tinted Jack's cheeks, right before frost crawled across his skin, leaving everything in shades of palest blues and stark white. "I've seen a lot of other werewolves, actually, and they're, well... They tend to have fucked up relationships."

Bloodthirsty monsters, that was something of a given. Jack was the only apparent exception, so of course he'd be bothered. "I'm listening."

"Wolf and wolf pairings, the woman's always subordinate. Wolf and human pairings, the human's always subordinate. And you're not a wolf." Jack's eyes were just a little darker than normal, but not quite red. "I don't want - you're _you_. I don't want to control you, or try to, and - they're all like that, to some degree. Or a lot. Some of those wolves..."

"Jack..."

"Start with scum, end up with super-powered scum," Jack said briskly. "Anyways, I don't want to do that. So, talking. Everyone says that's the key to a good relationship anyways, right?"

A fair point. Aster drummed his fingers against Jack's stomach. "What sort of things do you _not_ want to do?" he asked. "Figure that's as fair a place to start as any."

"Stalk you," Jack said, somewhat reluctantly. "Demand things. Where you've gone. Who you talked to. What about. Sex."

"Know a lot of werewolves do that?" he asked. Even as he spoke, Aster shifted closer to Jack, trying to combat a sudden chill. Jack wouldn't do any of that, he was as sure of _that_ as he was which direction the sun rose every morning, but that there were people stuck in that sort of situation...

And he had a fair idea werewolves didn't have divorce.

"A jiggit of jiggit, guess you'd say." After a long, silent moment, Jack blushed again. "I mean, a lot. Jiggit means twenty, but -"

"I - how could, I don't even know that word, so how could anyone -"

"It's more up-country shepherding these days." Sheep herding, of course. "Yan, tan, tethera is one, two, and three - I learnt it from some of the neighbours back in the day. Had ta keep track of tha sheep."

And Jack was putting on the accent - Aster couldn't have even said what accent. _Lazy_ , maybe - just because the Pooka couldn't help but twitch at it.

"So...?"

"So, some places used jiggit - lots of places used jiggit - but some places used 'a full score'. So a score would be twenty, then you'd start counting again. Four score and five would be eighty-five sheep, so you'd get taxed on that many. And -"

Jack stopped talking, because Aster had put his hand over the flapjaw's mouth. "Jack," he said, not bothering to hide his exasperation. Jack grinned at him, he felt it against his palm. "I didn't want a lecture on shepherd counting methods, or why you lot bother counting the woolies. I just wanted to know what the duck a jiggit was, and why you used it that way."

He moved his hand so Jack could talk. "You're adorable." He was not! "A score of a score. Think about it."

Twenty scores, each score marking down twenty... "You can't just say 'a lot'? Fer cryin out loud, Jackie."

The werewolf paused, nose wrinkling. "Jackie?" He tilted his head against the pillow. "Yeah, that one can stay. Anyways. Pretty much every werewolf is a controlling bastard."

Right, they were talking about ground rules. "So what do you want to do, then?"

" _Not_ be a controlling bastard?"

Aster sighed. "You're a werewolf, mate, I figure there's going to be shades of that everywhere. Not that I mind," he added, before Jack could get too worked up. Instead of tensing and pulling away, Jack just looked confused. "I can get pretty hyper-focused on my art or my gardening, if your version of 'controlling bastard' involves shoving food at me at regular intervals and insisting I sleep more than once a month, I'd count that a good thing."

Wait... no... his garden. Aster kept his dismay quiet, and pressed his face against Jack's side again. His poor garden. Maybe werewolf strength would help make a dent in the wreckage. Granted, the egg fields were alright, after Jack's efforts, but his personal garden...

"I can cook," Jack offered, so at odds to Aster's trail of thought he was momentarily confused. "I can do food. And sleep. That'd work."

"And it's not like I go much of anywhere on my own. Trips to get new plants, or look around for new colours, mostly. Wouldn't say no to a spot of company," he suggested. Actually, no, company sounded wonderful, as long as Jack understood Aster _would_ be focused on his sketchbook and not, say, conversation.

"I haven't traveled much, really. That sounds... it sounds nice."

"You can't come with me on my Easter run, though." The magic worked for Aster. It wouldn't work for Jack. "Done proper, time tends to fold on itself, I don't know if it'd hurt you or not."

Jack furrowed his brows. "Didn't happen last year..."

"You're not the Easter Bunny." Aster closed his eyes, feeling rather comfortable and disinclined to move. "An' you can't ask 'bout conversations I don't have," he mumbled.

"How do you mean?"

Why did Jack have to sound so _awake_? "I mean, I rarely leave my warren, and even more rarely talk to people. I've spent more time the past four months visiting with my fellow Guardians than I had the previous _century_. If I did talk to someone, bet I'd tell you all about it. Angry yelling might be a thing." He frowned. Actually, it was almost certainly guaranteed to be a thing. Unless Jack ran off to kill whoever'd recently taken the piss...

Groundhog.

Jack versus the groundhog.

How quickly could he reasonably get into an argument with that blowhard, without it looking suspicious?

Jack hummed, the sound resonating in his chest. "I honestly can't think of anything else we need to hammer out right now. Maybe agree to take things as they come? And if I overstep, punch me or something?"

"I'm not punching you."

"I _said_ 'or something'."

Aster huffed. "Fine. Or something, then. Agreed."

Jack finally yawned, jaw cracking. "I'm going to Burgess tomorrow, check up on my forest. Want to come with me?"

Oh, that sounded fun, actually. "Have you met your believers yet?"

"No, I - wait, what? Who?"

Aster grinned. This was _definitely_ going to be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now I address something in Patricia Briggs' universe that kind of bugs me. In one book it's mentioned that there are only, what, three to four packs where the alpha (or anyone) can be trusted with a ten year old werewolf girl? Out of hundreds of packs? I'm sorry, if there's someone who can't be trusted around anyone weaker than them, WHY are they allowed to remain in a position of authority - or even left alive? (Remembering that werewolves are hyper-aggressive predators and, with few exceptions, tend to see "physically weaker" as "prey, let's eat" regardless if they're looking at a rabbit or a human.)
> 
> If Jack were in charge of the North American werewolves, you can better believe there'd be a LOT of deaths to start with. The end result would probably end with more werewolves being psychologically healthy and safe to trust with small children, but man. Big time death toll to start.


	5. Chapter Four

His cave had been disturbed.

Jack grumbled, aware of the amused, overgrown rabbit over by the entrance. He'd changed his shirt for a hoodie first thing, though he'd kept the pants. Denim was alright, but deer hide was better. But his boxes of comic books had been moved, and the order was wrong, and his bedcovers were folded at the bottom of the bed instead of covering the whole thing like they were supposed to, and -

And in all honesty, if he hadn't known Bunny was the one responsible, he'd probably have been driven to homicide by now.

"Question for you." Strangely - or not so strangely - Bunny's voice eased some of his aggravation. Only some.

"Shoot." ... Why, exactly, did he have seventeen balloons, never inflated? He couldn't even remember picking them up.

Bunny gestured to the box of comic books. "You can't read, if I remember right?" Jack nodded. "So why collect 'em?"

A reasonable enough question. Jack sat back on his heels, a rough order restored to his dwelling. "Comic books are ninety percent pictures. I'll admit, I have no idea what's being said or what the exposition boxes are telling me, but I can get a general idea of the story and interactions just from the art."

The rabbit tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed. "What, really?" he asked.

"Sure." Jack flipped through the comic books until he found one. "Here, Man-Bat."

"Man..." Bunny made a strange gurgling noise when he inspected the cover.

"Right. See, when you look through the first few pages..." Jack moved closer, and pointed at each image as he spoke. "So this is Man-Bat's secret identity, and this guy's his... I don't know if this is his father or his uncle. Probably not his nanny, though the guy's always cooking and cleaning."

It was actually rather amusing, seeing the contortions Bunny's face went through. Jack considered, and discarded, an admission that he knew the tall, suited man was actually Man-Bat's butler - but Bunny's reaction was way too entertaining.

A few pages on, Jack pointed at the image of the main character, Man-Bat, standing next to Blue-Hawk. "Blue-Hawk's a bit of a... Well, back in my day, someone slept with that many women he'd be in trouble, is all I'll say." Or celebrated. Depending on if the women's brothers and fathers caught him before or after he scarpered to the next town. "I think he and Man-Bat were lovers, there's a lot of pictures of Blue-Hawk's butt."

Bunny took a deep breath and looked at the pages long enough that he was probably reading. "Jack? That's... not the relationship. At all."

"Then why're they always so..." He held his fingers inches apart, and growled.

"It's not sexual tension, mate, just trust me on that."

"Probably for the best, they hit each other a lot." Jack put the comic back in the box. "So what was this about me and believers?"

"Right, right. Believers. Follow me."

Jack hummed, and loped after Bunny, staying ground-bound for the moment. Bunny was going slow enough Jack could keep up. Sad to say, wolves were built more for endurance than speed, and Bunny would have easily left him in the dust. This pace was probably like a fast walk for the rabbit.

Or at least, Jack thought so before Bunny stopped and crouched down, breathing hard. "Uh, should I be worried?"

"Not really." Bunny took a deeper breath, and then shook his shoulders. "It's two things. One, Pooka aren't great shakes at marathons. Normally this distance wouldn't bother me, but that brings up the second thing. I'm still not fully recovered from that missed Easter."

Jack frowned, his wolf stirring in fang-bared interest. "What do you need? To recover, I mean."

"Time. And a few good Easters." Bunny stood up and stretched, chest expanding impressively with each breath. Jack mentally forgave  himself for missing what Bunny said after that, when faced with _that_ view.

"Sorry, what?"

Bunny looked down at him, and then chuckled. "Enjoying the view?"

"More than I should, if we're trying to have a conversation."

"Fair enough, you shorted out my brain swapping shirts." He had? "I said that I've been lazy, letting the kiddies' belief make up for my lack of proper fitness. I know at least five drill sergeants who'd be horrified by how out of shape I've become."

"Your shape is just fine." Broader shoulders than Jack could claim, that nipped down into a narrow waist. Most of Bunny's muscle was hidden by his fluff and fur, so he looked like he was just soft and cuddly, but Jack had gotten his hands on that chest when they'd napped and there was definitely a fine set of pectorals there.

Actually, seemingly more than one set, but rabbits, multiple pups in a litter... It didn't bother him.

Bunny looked amused. "Maybe I look fit, but my endurance is shot, has been for some time. Worse'n a green recruit these days, me. Might have to find a way to cut myself off from the belief, without dying at the same time, actually exercise... Later, though."

Jack stuffed his wolf into the back of his mind. "So what your saying is you owe your body to diet, not exercise?"

If possible, Bunny looked even more amused than before. "Long as that diet includes belief."

"Nah, that can be the drug letting you perform beyond your usual physical limitations." He ducked a cuff to the ear, and grinned. "You're not saying I'm wrong."

"Unfortunately, you're not. Give me a mo' and we'll go again." Bunny started stretching his legs out, braced against a sturdy tree. Jack, heeding manners and paranoia both, looked away and studied his forest.

He'd have to do a better patrol of his territory later; not just the forest, but the towns around it, Burgess and a few smaller locations he thought of as 'villages', no matter what they called theirselves. Places that weren't even big enough to support their own schools, but bussed their children to the biggest of the villages, where both grade school and high school hung out on the outskirts. Farming communities, though there wasn't as much farming as in his day. More automotive plants, which theoretically paid better.

Not his concern, really, apart from making sure nothing nasty slipped in while he wasn't looking. Hobgoblins were nasty for machinery.

He preferred the forest, though. The cleaner air, the light filtering through the leaves on the trees...

Silver stirred, demanding, and Jack relinquished control. The wolf stalked several feet off the marked path they'd been running, and examined a fallen tree trunk. Mushrooms grew thick on the trunk, off-white growths of shelf fungi. Silver frowned and twisted his head, looking upward at the branches and the leaves, before turning and squinting into the shadows.

_"It has been almost a year since we've been around,"_ Jack pointed out. Still, if he'd had hackles, they'd have been fully up. As it was, the back of their neck prickled with gooseflesh as entirely inadequate human body hairs tried to stand on end.

_"Nothing should make us uneasy in our own territory,"_ Silver countered, eyeing the fungi with distaste. He'd just shifted his weight to start kicking and grind the things to dust underfoot, when Bunny called for them.

"A moment," Silver called back, before shoving control at Jack. He fumbled it, a bit like having the shepherd staff shoved into his hands, before getting good hold on it. They walked back to the trail, frowning. They hadn't gone that far off track, had they?

No, they'd only walked a few feet. Returning, it was more than a few feet.

_"If it's a vampire, we can kill them, right?"_

Jack grinned. Vampire, dark witch... So many things could happen to nasty people who weren't careful in the woods. Such as a cranky, ice-wielding werewolf.

Bunny frowned at him when he emerged from the trees. "Where'd you go? I said I'd just need a moment."

What was he going to say, he felt uneasy and something was making it easy to leave the trail, hard to get back? "I thought I saw something, a snare. Just a crushed pop can."

At that, Bunny's frown eased. "Ah, human rubbish. Can't escape it even in back of Bourk, and this ain't Bourk. C'mon, you remember where that Jamie lad lives, right?"

Jamie? Jack tilted his head, and then nodded.

"Wanna race?" Bunny paced a circle around the werewolf, smirking. "Not that you've got a chance against this rabbit, mind, but me out of shape should give you a halfway decent chance."

... It was _Silver's_ fault he squawked at that. Not Jack's offended pride. Silver's pride. Yup. "I'm faster than you think I am! Besides," he added, after half a second's thought. "If I lose, I get to stare at your... tail."

It was Bunny's turn to squawk, before he smirked. "Then you'll get a chance to look your fill, won't you?"

* * *

"I thought pebbles at windows was out dated," Jack grumbled.

"Out dated the way flying is cheating." Also, about as effective, which was to say, very. No sooner had Aster flipped a pebble up against Jamie's window than the kid was pressing his face against the glass, trying to see directly down into the back garden. Aster waved at him.

The boy cried out, delighted, and vanished from the window. Aster took the time to dig out several dog biscuits from a belt pouch. Jack stole one, and _ate it_ , but before he could take another the back door slammed open and the _hell hound_ emerged.

Aster threw a dog biscuit into Abby's open mouth before she could bark. The hell hound startled back, dropped the treat, snapped it up before it could hit the ground, and then jumped off the porch and rammed her nose into Aster's crotch.

Good thing he'd done a bit of shifting in preparation of the visit.

"Rude thing, aren't you?" Jack asked, and dragged the hell hound aside by the collar. "Sit. Okay, you don't know how to sit. I'll just -"

"You came!" Jamie flung himself off the porch. Aster only just caught him before the kid splattered against the ground. "And you found Jack! Hi Jack!"

Jack looked amused. Aster couldn't help the relief; being chosen as a Guardian - even if Jack hadn't accepted - didn't mean a bloke _liked_ kids. In fact, the current four were almost abnormalities, compared to the Ombric or Nightlight. And Katherine, he couldn't forget Katherine. Nightlight liked kids from a distance, Katherine liked kids only if they were reading books and leaving her alone, and Ombric... Well, he liked _adults_.

Guardianship was more about protecting kids, not necessarily interacting with them. Ombric got his believers through the Father Time shtick, Katherine wrote her books, and Nightlight... Aster wasn't sure exactly what Nightlight did. Inspire those little lights kids had in their bedrooms? At any rate, for all that Aster had gone centuries seeing children once a year, it was still loads more than those three did.

Jack, though, seemed to fall closer to the 'kids are amusing and entertaining' side of things. Especially when he made grabby hands at Jamie - which just left the hell hound free to bound over to Aster's side again.

"Whoops." Jack caught the beast by the collar again. "Sit. _Sit_. There you go. Good dog. And you're Jamie."

The kid's eyes doubled in size. "You know my _name_?"

Werewolves shouldn't look so indulgent. Or at least Jack shouldn't. It made Aster want to kiss him. "Bunny told me. Put him down, Bunny, kids should use their legs once a day."

"Fine." Not like the mite was heavy, but being dangled like that probably wasn't comfortable. The kid ran over to Jack and then, half a foot away, stopped and started bouncing. Looked exhausting.

"Why should kids use their legs once a day?"

Jack, with the hand not currently fastened to the hell hound's collar, patted Jamie on the head. "Otherwise their legs fall off."

The kid might've believed that, if Aster hadn't snickered. Maybe. "I don't believe you, legs don't just fall off." Then, with a lightning-quick flash, Jamie changed the subject. "Where've you been, anyways?"

Jack blinked, and sat down on the grass. The hell hound, with nowhere else to go, laid down beside him. "The Rockies. And the prairies. And the North Pole, sometimes."

Aster settled down on the porch steps, one hand in his hell-beast-bribe pouch, and watched. Jamie, barely taking a breath between questions, interrogated Jack at full speed and no pause for answers. Jack, smiling, did his best to answer in those brief pauses, not at all bothered by the way he kept getting interrupted and talked over.

Jack liked kids. Sure, so far it was just the one kid, but - but you had to like kids to smile like that, to laugh without actually laughing because kids were sensitive to that sort of thing. No one liked being mocked, and young kids hadn't yet learned that not everything was about them. And a person had to care about that, the way Jack clearly cared about that, and it was...

It was nice. Aster cared, most of the time, but El-Ahrairah's ears, they were exhausting. Especially in large numbers. And anyways, one-on-one, what were you supposed to _do_ with them? What did kids enjoy these days? Did you throw balls for them to chase? Except that was probably dogs, not human kids, but what if it was? Were you supposed to treat children like puppies that could talk?

This, though, this was good. He could sit back and toss in a comment, make Jamie and Jack laugh, be part of it without feeling awkward.

Jack liked children. Aster liked knowing that.

He smiled, and listened, and watched. After this, they'd hit up the twin's house, see how Jack handled being bombarded with questions from both sides.  

"Stay there, I'm going to call everyone over!" Jamie twisted and bolted away from Jack. He tripped on the stairs, saved only by a hastily grabbed furry shoulder, and continued in through the back door.

Or maybe Jack could deal with all of his new believers right now. "Ready for a party?" he asked.

Jack grinned at him. "Bring it on. Kids are great."

Oh yeah. Jack liked kids. Aster couldn't help but smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the post is a day late - work has been kicking my butt. Thankfully, today promises to be better, if only because it's my Friday.
> 
> ... Still gonna get my butt kicked.


	6. Chapter Five

He remembered drowning.

It normally didn't bother him. Generally it never even came up. The few times it had, thus far, it had been akin to recalling dry, academic facts. The snow had lingered late that year. He'd taken Emily skating on the lake - well, more of a pond, now he'd seen real lakes - in the forest. He'd stayed along the edges, where the ice might have been thicker, might have been thinner, but the water would be shallow enough he wouldn't drown.

Only, the ice had begun to crack under Emily's skates. And Jack had done everything right - gone down on hands and knees and crawled, until he was close enough that between shepherd's staff and Emily's careful shuffling, he'd been able to hook her and toss her to safety. Only, he was a werewolf, heavier than he looked, and the ice that had been cracking under Emily's weight broke under his.

Months - a year, three centuries, depending on perspective - of repressed _feeling_ had just come roaring to the front of his mind, a churning storm of thundersnow and horror.

Amused, yet wary, as he glided around the edges of the lake. The air was cold but it was a distant thing, as it always was to him. The way the sunlight glittered on the snow, brought out the red highlights in Emily's hair. The way his stomach had given a twinge, and his thoughts had started turning to supper.

The odd, out of place sound of ice crackling, like icicles before they fell off the roof. Emily's catch of breath. The way her face had twisted as she looked down at the fractures spreading around her skates.

He'd snapped the laces. Sinew was easy enough to get and he needed to get the skates _off_. It hadn't felt fast enough and still he'd thrown them aside seconds after realizing the problem. The ice had been slick underfoot, cold the way the air wasn't. He'd dropped to his hands and knees without hesitation, bruises numbing as he crawled as fast as he dared.

The ice had creaked and groaned under his weight, and it'd been hard to breathe. Like all the air, in and out, was colliding in his throat and not moving. He'd known exactly when he passed the deep water point, when it got to the spot where the water was deep enough - where it was deep enough.

Had he thought about going through, crawling along the muck on the bottom to the shore? Probably, maybe. Wouldn't be the first time, really. Long as he held his breath and kept his directions, theoretically he could do it. Except if Emily went down with him - no. And Emily, his sister, _his_ , his to love, to guide, to protect. He couldn't let anything happen to her.

Desperation gave him the idea, and the old wood had been smooth and almost warm in his hand. He'd wanted to scream, to demand Emily move _now_ but she was so frightened. So he'd joked and teased and urged her an inch, two, half a foot closer. Reached with the staff, suddenly clumsy, numb from more than mere cold.

And that heart stopping moment - Emily safe, _safe_ , safe! - and the ice gave out beneath him.

The shock of cold water had driven all the air out of his lungs. He'd floundered, clawed at the water that just flowed around his fingers and gave no resistance to his efforts. Silver had surged forward, and the pain of the change had joined the pain of no air and so much cold, and he'd sank.

Jack shuddered, and looked away from his lake. He was never bathing in it again.

_"Could get smelly."_ Silver gave an impression of curling closer. _"Can we find out what happened to Emily? I miss her."_

"So do I." First, though, he'd finish up his little patrol. He was almost finished, but it wouldn't be done until he'd returned to his cave. He looked down at the lake again, shuddered, and launched into the air.

Patrol had been... odd. Getting caught in memories of his own death might have been the most obvious - though, it was entirely possible the recollection had just been overdue - but there had been other things.

Like the way he _kept getting lost_ in his own territory. Jack growled and backtracked to a more familiar spot, and corrected his course. He almost went astray twice more, which, considering there was hardly any distance between his cave and the lake, was worrying. Sure, he'd gone around the back of the lake instead of directly across, but that shouldn't have meant anything.

Poison ivy coated the ground in all directions, anywhere there was the slightest dip in the ground. Vines draped across tree branches, more like hanging moss in the redwood forests than anything found in Pennsylvania. The trees had gotten at once thicker and thinner, in that there were more branches and more leaves blocking the sunlight, but fewer trucks. A number - a large number - of trees had simply died and fallen over, which was... not the normal course of things.

Sure, a tree that died fell over, but unless it was from a storm or something, usually not _immediately_. Usually it rotted first, enough to overcome the natural rigidity of wood and the anchoring effect of its roots. A year was nothing compared to that. Jack usually didn't interfere, unless a dead tree was threatening a house or one of the walking trails. There were - had been - dead trees standing for five years now, hollowed out and housing any number of birds, squirrels, and one adorable family of foxes.

All of those dead trees had also fallen down. They were rotting with suspicious speed. Ten years seemed to have been compressed into one.

... And he was lost _again_. Silver growled, and backtracked through the trees, until he found a familiar boulder and oriented himself. It was the lack of light. And the way space seemed to bend, so that you looked up and stepped the wrong way around a tree and ended up yards away from where you were _supposed_ to be.

And there was always something making him look up. Easily explained. A blue jay taking off, barely seen out of the corner of his eye. Wind rustling a bush, but _only_ that bush. A twig snapping right behind him, only for it to just be a rabbit, a normal rabbit, taking off at speed away from the werewolf.

It was making him irritated. Silver wavered for a moment, sorely tempted to go after that rabbit and kill it. He wasn't even hungry. He just wanted to rip something apart and watch it _die_.

He refrained. Bunny wasn't a rabbit, not really, no more than the fairy Grim was a dog, but there were enough similarities... Besides. Once he finally got back to his own fucking cave in his own fucking forest, he'd be checking in on the kids. Better not do that with blood on his hands. Literal blood, at any rate, because he'd had metaphorical blood there - more, on his fangs - ever since childhood.

"You're in a mood," Jack said, when they finally made it to the cave. In a marked contrast to the rest of their forest, there was a half-circle of clear area around the mouth of his main cave, where the trees looked normal and the sun shone through the leaves with normal strength.

Though... was the circle getting smaller? He thought it was.

Hardly a comforting thought.

Jack sat down on his bed and grabbed a bag of flavoured jerky he'd... obtained... earlier. He understood why stores couldn't sell bags of food that had been opened and 'sampled' by customers, just as he understood why they couldn't turn around and donate the opened bags, or let employees take them home, even when said employee had stood _right there_ chewing the customer out when he opened it.

Didn't mean he wasn't going to take the bag himself. Even if BBQ flavour tasted like too much black pepper to him. Food was food, and if he was going to visit the kids without Silver grumbling about everything and anything, he had to eat. A full belly didn't exactly placate an angry werewolf, but it did make it easier to keep hold of his temper.

_"Usually, a full belly comes from killing something first."_ Even so, Silver was starting to settle down. _"If only we could_ find _the source. I didn't notice anywhere I wanted to avoid. Did you?"_

Well, the wolf was using complete sentences and proper grammar, so at least he didn't have to puzzle the question out. "Not really, but we got lost so many times, who can tell?" Maybe flying overhead...

Whatever they did, it'd have to be later. They had some kids to visit.

Without Bunny, unfortunately. The rabbit had apologized to Jack a few days ago, and then vanished into his Warren. Apparently the egg fields they'd worked in were only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and while Jack and the yeti had cleaned up the workspace, the rest of the gardens weren't in good shape. And Bunny had spent the past few months trying to find Jack, not cleaning up his home.

Jack would feel guilty about it, except the idea of Bunny neglecting his home to try and find him made Silver happy. It made Jack happy too, if he forced himself to be honest. Last time he'd come first for anyone, his dad had moved them to America. And then he'd grown older, and his dad had started letting him range further afield, make his own mistakes, and more importantly, make Jack clean up after his own mistakes. He'd stopped being his dad's first priority all the time, which was only right and proper when his dad had a wife and a younger child and his son was a werewolf, but...

It was still nice, having someone else put him first. Even if he wanted to grumble over Bunny letting his _home_ fall into disrepair. A man took care of his home. Even if Bunny had been worried, he still shouldn't have just abandoned the Warren like that.

... Did Bunny wear an apron when cleaning?

Wait, why was he thinking that?

Jack tucked the empty bag into his sweater pocket, and took to the air. Silver was quiet, suspiciously so. Maybe it was the wolf's fault he'd thought that? Yeah, it probably was...

_"Not me,"_ Silver said, after they'd left the woods and started flying over Suburbia. _"Nice thought. But not me."_

Oh. Well. Jack would have to do some personal reflection later, then, try and figure out why the idea of Bunny wearing an apron and wielding a broom was so alluring. He wasn't turned on by clean floors, was he?

Silver brought to mind the mental image of Bunny's tail, framed quite nicely by apron strings tied in a bow with the tails dangling to either side.

Okay, yes, that... that was definitely a good reason to imagine Bunny in an apron. Bad time for it, considering he was just dropping in on the kids, but a good reason indeed.

"What's going on, short people?" he asked, from his safe perch on the porch railing. The kids, who hadn't noticed him dropping in, all jumped and twisted around to look at him.

"Jack! You're here! When'd you get here?" Pippa waved him in, while everyone else was still stammering over their hellos. "Do you want a drink?"

"Nah, I'm good, thanks." He brushed his legs off, a nice way to check and make sure he didn't have anything child inappropriate adjusting the fit of his pants, and then stepped off the porch. It wasn't much of a drop, really, so there was no pause between landing and sauntering towards the small gathering.

"So?" he asked. Monty and Jamie shifted to the side, leaving him a spot between them. "Such serious faces, guys."

"There was something in the news..." Cupcake bit her lip and reached for a folded up magazine.

"Jack!" Jamie was practically vibrating. "Are werewolves _real_?"

Silver blinked, and took the magazine from Cupcake. The writing was meaningless, but the pictures weren't. The cover page showed a large, black man brooding over two children. When he flipped to the inside pages, another picture of the same man, this time standing in front of a small group of humans outfitted in tactical gear, took up most of the first page.

If he hadn't recognized the man in question, he would've been absolutely lost and bewildered. As it was... Werewolves had come out to the public? And they'd chosen this guy to do it?

_"Better than the idiot in Montana."_ Silver sank beneath Jack's skin, at once grumpy and reluctantly amused. He had a good point. There were worse people to be the face of the werewolves, if that was what was really happening here.

"Jack?"

Right, kids, questions... oh boy. "Well, depends on what you mean by werewolves. There's several types." And if he rolled up the magazine, no one would notice the way his hands shook, ever so slightly.

"The ones in the magazine," Caleb said.

"That turn into wolves on the full moon," Claude added.

Jack felt Monty shiver against him, and sighed. Well, first things first, he supposed. "Yup, they're real."

Jamie lit up. In contrast, Monty shrank down and pressed further against Jack's side. The rest of the kids looked cautiously interested.

"However," Jack said, before Jamie could get too enthusiastic, "werewolves _are_ dangerous. Same way a lot of angry, human men are dangerous, actually."

"Aren't they ravening monsters, though?" Pippa tilted her head. "All the movies and legends say they are."

Silver grumbled at that. Ravening indeed. Jack reminded the wolf about swaths of dead trees and dead animals that had gotten blamed on tornadoes, because nothing else could cause so much destruction. Silver shut up.

"Depends on what you mean by that. I mean." Jack half-laughed, and rubbed the back of his neck. "The big, bad guys of history, Napoleon, Hitler, Genghis Khan? Killed tons, and everyone - okay, most everyone, Napoleon and Genghis were working for the betterment of their people, but that meant other people had to suffer... Um. This kinda got away from me."

"They were human?" Cupcake suggested.

"Yeah. Human. No werewolf at all to make 'em nasty, creative killers. That said, if someone was a bad guy before getting turned into a werewolf, then they're a bad guy after. If they're a good guy, then they're a good guy with a temper and weird reactions to the moon."

"... But they're wolves."

Jack wrapped an arm around Monty. "Kid, why don't you like wolves?"

Monty's breath shuddered on the inhale. "When - a few years ago. I was in the woods, and I wasn't supposed to, so I was trying to get home. Only I got lost, and - and I was chased across the lake by a few wolves. I was lucky it was frozen, or I'd have never gotten across. They didn't follow me, I don't know why."

Now, why did that - oh yeah. Hadn't that been... right. "I remember that," Jack murmured, and then coughed. "Uh, you're welcome for the frozen lake, kid. And chasing off the hounds."

"Wait, what? Really?" Monty straightened up a little, and everyone was staring at Jack. "But - but why didn't I see you then?"

Because it'd been the night after a full moon, because Monty hadn't believed, and because Jack had been as naked as the day he'd been born. Probably a good thing Monty hadn't believed. "Remember, you can only see me if you believe in me. It was pretty late winter, early spring. Every reason for the lake to be frozen over still."

"Oh, yeah... so you saw the wolves!"

Jack chuckled. "Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but those weren't wolves."

"They - what?"

"Wolves haven't lived wild in Pennsylvania for... God. Just before the year 1900. I mean, there's zoos, and I know of at least one sanctuary, but no wild wolves."

The kids all blinked at that. Monty scrunched up his nose. "But... what chased me, then?"

"Best guess, coyotes." Besides, they'd scampered as soon as he'd started growling at them, and coyotes didn't like werewolves. Dogs did, but Jack was sure dogs had gone at least a little nuts during domestication. "There's a couple thousand coyotes in Pennsylvania, and they don't have the fear of humans wolves usually have."

"So... I should be afraid of were-coyotes then?" Monty folded his arms. "That... okay. I guess."

"You should definitely be cautious around wild animals," Jack agreed. "Or any big, angry, dog-like animal. As for werewolves... yeah, dangerous. Especially just after changing. It's painful, immediately after the change it feels like the world's worst case of pins and needles, and the werewolf is _hungry_. Of course, it works the opposite way, too, wolf to human... but no one looks sideways at a bunch of scruffy people at Denny's first thing in the morning."

"Are you saying the druggies at Denny's are actually werewolves?" Caleb asked.

"Well, I'm not saying they're not..."

Claude waved one hand. "Jack... are you a werewolf?"


	7. Chapter Six

"Aster? Aster! There you are." The young-seeming woman bounded past low heaps of cut branches and pulled weeds. The branches and weeds burst back into life as she approached, and withered unnaturally quickly when she got further away. Ragweed pollen and fragments of shed leaves coated her from the hips down, and mud spotted the hems of her lowest skirts.

"'lo there, Sera." It was about time for a break, anyways. Another hour or two, he'd have taken a break to go looking for Jack, anyways. Aster stood up, spine popping and then cracking when he leaned back, stretching his arms over his head.

Sera looked him over, without even the mild hint of curiosity everyone else seemed to have. Then again, it was _Sera_. The last time she'd looked at anything with lust, it'd been an electron microscope.

"You've been neglecting your stretches. And I brought you presents!"

"So what'd you bring me?" Aster dusted off his knees, then his hands. His vegetable garden was almost a dead loss, so he'd simply started cutting everything back, including the Cimneh bushes. It wasn't like he'd be able to use any of it this year, never mind that his own, personal fertility was hardly necessary or important. More annoying than anything, really; spending a whole week thinking with his reproductive organs was hardly useful.

Even if the timing, his season falling about the same time as Easter, was somehow appropriate.

"Albion strawberry seeds. And Amana tomatoes." Sera waggled two cloth baggies at him. "Plus lots, lots more!"

Aster shoved pride to the back of his mind, and made grabby hands at the seed bags.

"You're cute." He _was not_. "Any reason you asked specifically for... what was it...? Oh, right!" Sera grinned, eyes opened wide, teeth flashing in a grin. "Fruits and vegetables common to late seventeen-hundreds German shepherds, and same-time-period poor as dirt colonials?"

"Gimmie my seeds and you'll get your chocolate. Information's a bonus, gotta do something special for that."

Sera held the bags behind her back. "Nope! Information first, and if it's interesting, I'll send some pixies down here to help neaten things up."

Aster hesitated, but the sheer amount of work alone decided him. Pixies were the brownies of the woods and fields, after all; a lone dozen would be able to do in days what would normally take him weeks if not months. _And_ they'd help put in new plantings when they were done cleaning up. Not necessarily where he'd put things, but certainly wherever was best for the plantings. And that'd mean he'd have more time free to spend with Jack.

"Let's have some tea, first," he decided. Aster led the way back to his home, Sera skipping along behind him, the beginnings of a headache pulsing at the base of his ears.

At least there was nothing wrong with his house that a dust cloth couldn't fix. He'd have to find one, sometime. Eventually. Sera politely brushed the seat of her chair off, and then watched as Aster hunted down his tea pot and two mugs, gave them a quick wash, and then started the water heating for the tea.

"You need a maid."

Aster frowned. "What'd I do with one?"

Sera muttered something about pigsties and living in one, but Aster pretended deafness and so obviously didn't hear her.

"So?" The woman seemed to realize there wasn't any point harping on about the lack of dusting, and changed the subject back to the original one. "Why those seeds in particular?"

Why did the water never boil just when he wanted it to? "I'm expanding my kitchen garden." As compared to the water garden, the tree garden, the wilderness garden... Come to think on it, why did he have so many gardens?

Ah, right, filling empty, unused spaces. Sera had been very helpful with that. Aster should probably share a few more details, satisfy her dratted curiosity.

Though, considering the hold she had on the seed bags, he'd have to tell her more just to get them. He sighed. "Why do you even care?"

"When someone's held to the same habits year after year after century, a sudden change can be... worrying." Sera raised one eyebrow, a skill _Aster had taught her_ , so it shouldn't have had an effect... But it did. The fur prickled along his shoulders.

"There's a bloke. And there's the water. Wait a mo' while I set up the cups."

Sera began humming a spritely, repetitive tune. It was just familiar enough to be _incredibly annoying_.

Setting up the mugs didn't take nearly long enough, and they were too full to slam down on the table. Aster glared as fiercely as he could, but Sera ignored him.

"So, this _bloke_ ," she prompted.

"Jack Frost." No recognition. "Winter spirit. Well, among other things. Last year he defeated Pitch Black, almost on his lonesome."

Sera paused briefly, before she blinked and took a deep breath. "Pitch Black isn't dead. I'd have noticed."

"Defeated, not killed." Aster took a sip of his tea. "You want to hear this?"

"I might as well hear it from you as anyone."

Fair enough. "Well, it's like this..." He laid out the events of the past year as concisely as possible. He mentioned Pitch had been scarred during one of his fights with Jack - "Werewolves, even when human, can apparently scar even the strongest of fear spirits." - but didn't let himself go into too much detail. He closed the recap with Jack taking off from the Workshop thanks to North's blundering.

Sera sipped her tea, and stared off into space. After a minute, she pushed the bags of seeds over to Aster's side of the table. "You could have just said you wanted to grow food your boyfriend knows about."

"And unless you included instruction packets, I'll need his advice on growing... Are these labels in German?"

The woman snickered at him. "They might be, yes."

"I don't speak German!"

"Good thing your boyfriend does, isn't it?"

* * *

"Monty, you can come down now, it's okay! It's just Jack!" Pippa looked from the tree house to Jack and back again. "Can't you fly up and get him?"

"He feels safe up there. Not going to wreck it for him." Jack relaxed a little more into the grass, two curious children poking at his stomach. For science, they'd said, but he had his doubts. "Anyways, I'm not going to transform for you nutbars, and that's final."

"But why not?" Jamie poked Jack in the forehead. "It'd be so cool!"

"It's not like the movies, kiddo." Well, maybe movies for an older audience, but even the nicest, fastest of changes tended to be at least a little bloody. "Besides, it's not the full moon," he lied.

Half of the kids looked crestfallen at that, while the other half... Well, if it weren't impossible, he was sure they'd go off and fight the moon for being only half-full when they wanted it to be full, _now_. Adorable little bruisers.

"But according to the magazine interview, werewolves don't have to change on the full moon. I mean, not only on the full moon." Jamie pointed to a page that presumably said just that. "It says they can change anytime they want, so why won't you?"

Persistent little bugger. Jack reached up and ruffled Jamie's hair. "Maybe I don't want to."

"But Jack!"

"But me no buts, my lad." He had to stop, both man and wolf marvelling at the horror of what he'd just said. He was turning into his _father_. Silver shook it off and nudged him back into the conversation. "You can't make someone do something they don't want to, that's wrong. Well, I mean, sometimes you can, who really wants to go to school when there's three tests on the same day? But you know what I mean."

"Personal choice is important." Cupcake smacked Jamie on the shoulder, lightly since he barely shifted from the blow, and sat down. "What else is real? Vampires? Witches?"

Jack blinked, and winced. "Well..."

"What about bigfoot?" Jamie squealed, eyes wide and mouth twisted in a delighted grin.

That was easier. "There's a whole bunch of them working at the North Pole. Talk like Chewie in Star Wars."

"I knew they were real! I knew it!"

Caleb and Claude stopped poking Jack's stomach. "Do you think we could meet one? Just to say we did?"

Jack grinned. "Sure, but any fur you submit to analysis will turn out to be bear fur or something. I have no idea how they do it. But if I did, werewolves probably wouldn't have come out of hiding."

He chatted with the kids a while longer, taking care not to say anything when Monty finally climbed down out of the tree house to join the conversation. The boy looked embarrassed enough as it was, he didn't need anyone bringing his running and hiding up. Jack moved slowly, but the kid didn't flinch away, so Jack ruffled his hair and left it at that.

Running and hiding was the most sensible thing a person could do around a werewolf, honestly.

_"Except running means chase, and hiding means dig out,"_ Silver grumbled.

_"Bluffing a werewolf doesn't work, though."_ Jack finally pulled away from the conversation when he heard the first sounds of an adult approaching the backyard. "Sounds like it's dinner time for you. I'll come visit in a few days, okay?"

"Sure thing, Jack. We'll be here." Cupcake hugged him, and then Jamie hugged him, and then the rest of the kids mobbed him. He probably lost a bit of hair from Monty's awkward attempt at returning the hair ruffle.

_"Kids in woods!"_ Silver reminded him. Right.

"Hey, you lot do me a favour? Stay out of the woods for the next little bit?" Jack rubbed the back of his neck. A good excuse, a good - ahah. "I'm not sure, but I think a black bear's trying to move in."

"Are you going to fight a bear?" Caleb leaned forward, and rubbed his hands together. "Can we watch?"

"Uh, no. Very much no. To both." Jack shook his head. "Keep your noses clean, I'll see you later!"

It was at once a relief and a regret to leap into the air and fly back towards his woods. Kids were the absolute best, but they could be tiring in groups. And even the most patient dog - or werewolf - needed time to get away from the ear pulling, tail chewing, and endless questions.

Well, the fun had been had, but it was time to get back to work.

_"Quick sweep, then North. Food. Bunny."_ Silver was a wolf, he didn't have eyebrows to waggle, but that was definitely the impression Jack got. _"Snuggle Bunny."_

"Sounds good." Maybe just snuggling, get used to cuddling a furry being bigger than he was, instead of the little cat-sized rabbit-being Bunny had been for a while there. Maybe nag the rabbit into reading aloud. His father had been about as illiterate as Jack was, maybe more since there hadn't been an excess of signs back then, but Grace had learning and she'd brought the world of books into their lives. And Bunny had a great voice. No doubt he was great at reading books.

Jack flew below the tree branches, ducking up above every time he seemed to be going astray. It didn't make any sense. Even when he was paying attention, maybe especially when he was paying attention, things seemed to shift. The further into the forest he went, the harder it was to find the walking trails he _knew_ were there. Under the tree branches, his every sense insisted north was actually east, or south. He turned left and seemed to go right.

He was _lost_ , and he hated it.

This was his territory.

Jack stopped to perch on a tree branch. So far, no feeling like he had to avoid places. But - when he checked above the trees, he'd gone a normal distance. Below, it seemed like he'd traveled for miles. Above, the sun hadn't moved that far, maybe an hour's distance. Below, hours.

His perch was a good one, if he were hunting. Which he kind of was. Or if he was visible and trying to remain hidden, which... well, invisible, not trying to hide. Vampires and witches, no matter how annoying, had as much difficulty seeing him as anyone else who didn't believe. At any rate, there were enough lower tree branches that he'd be screened from anyone down on the ground, but from above, he could see reasonably well in pretty much every direction. It was the sort of perch he'd have happily killed for back when hunting deer for the family's larders.

It was as good a place to sit as any, and being so hidden kept Silver happy.

_"What if we're going about this the wrong way?"_ he finally asked.

The wolf hummed in answer, a question without words. Fair enough.

_"Like... we're looking for a vampire or a witch, but maybe that's not it. Belief lets people see us, touch us... can it affect the woods? Maybe something happened in the year away, or - well, the werewolves came out, what, a week ago? How long does it take for an interview to reach a print magazine, anyways?"_

Since Jack didn't know, Silver just snorted. _"Maybe,"_ the wolf allowed. _"Yellowstone?"_

Oh, yes. Cause, effect, and hidden cause and effect. Jack grimaced. _"We'll have to talk to North."_

_"Bunny."_

_"North and Bunny. And Tooth. And the yeti. This isn't something we should answer with just one -"_ Jack tilted his head, and then nearly jumped out of his skin. He did flinch back off the tree branch.

The rabbit's death-scream finished echoing through the forest. There hadn't been a lot of birdsong before, but now the woods seemed strangely silent.

Almost silent. At the very edge of his hearing, he could hear a low, threatening rumble. Distant thunder... or a wolf growling.

_"Coyote,"_ Silver corrected him. _"Only wolf here me."_

Jack nodded, and headed towards that low rumble. Probably a coyote. Or maybe a dog. A big dog. Or maybe a wolf had gotten out of the sanctuary after all, though they were very careful with security. Then again, there were always idiots who were sure the laws didn't apply to them, who wanted a wolf, or usually a wolf-dog, and bought one illegally...

Or, he realized, as the source of the growling came into view, it could be something else.

At least two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. Claws that could half-retract were currently fully extended, digging into the loam. Bright, golden eyes that all but glowed in the shadows, black fur that blended in with the darkness. Long canines, longer than a wolf claimed, showing in brief flashes as the beast tore the little forest bunny to pieces.

It wasn't even eating the pieces.

It was the shoulders that cinched it. Broad, almost bear-like, warping the otherwise lupine shape into something monstrous, unnatural.

Rabbit destroyed, the werewolf lifted its head, blood dripping from its lower jaw like drool.

And it stared directly at Jack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who here knows who Sera is?


	8. Chapter Seven

Aster ignored the cold, the snow, and the wind, for once. He ignored how long it was taking the yeti to open the door. He ignored Sera, beside him and bouncing on her toes. He focused his attention instead on the sound on the edge of his hearing. If he wasn't _completely_ losing his mind, that almost sounded like Jack. Yelling.

Very loudly.

"Hi!" Sera beamed up at the unlucky yeti, who'd just cracked the door open. The yeti's heavy fur obscured the more subtle expressions, but this one looked pained. And with the door open, Aster was able to confirm that yes, someone was yelling, and that someone sounded like Jack.

"Can we come in?"

Aster sighed. "We're coming in. Hurry up!" Sera beamed at him, and trailed after him as he strode through the workshop floor. The yeti weren't working; they mostly stood in place, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes as the yelling continued without any indication of winding down.

"German," Sera said. Aster glanced at her.

"If anyone would know..."

"Old German, too. Well, not super-old, just a few centuries out of date." She paused, eyes twinkling. "Is there anyone you know who'd use an older form of German, be here, and be yelling really, really loudly?"

His expression was no doubt the picture definition of besotted. "Wonder what's got Jackie all fired up? Don't think even that arsehole on the news station got him this riled, and he hates that guy."

On the other hand, last time Aster'd seen Jack contemplate the arsehole, there'd been mutterings about thundersnow and directing lighting through windows. Apparently a "manufactured act of god" against the man was the current plan of action.

This didn't sound like rants about thundersnow and bigoted, out of date opinions that had been reprehensive back in the eighteenth century.

"News station?" Sera paused, now one step ahead of him, and tilted her head. The yelling was clearer now, and whatever Jack had just said, it sounded rather violent. "I'm not translating that."

"Some station that takes conservation -"

"I think you mean conservative stance."

"- to an extreme. El-Ahrairah only knows which station, though. Last time I paid attention to the news, one of the King Georges had just died and the town crier was yelling in my ear."

"You're so out of touch." Sera started back up the stairs, and led the way to the yelling. North's office door was closed, not that it mattered much with the volume Jack was yelling at. She pushed it open, and they walked in, completely unnoticed.

The office was almost as cold as the outside, thanks to the broken window. Glass shards sparkled on the carpet, while more shards glittered in Jack's hair and the fabric of his sweater. Dried dots of blood spotted his face and hands, though the wounds had already closed over.

Aster didn't speak a speck of German; belief and magic usually took care of any linguistics issues, so he'd never really seen the point. He'd learnt English less through need and more through osmosis. Even magic translation didn't change the fact that while he understood what was said, he was hearing it in the other language.

This, though... "I'd have thought there'd be the usual translation work," Aster admitted to Sera.

Jack made a rather violent gesture with his hands, reminiscent of unscrewing a pickle jar. A head-sized one.

"Jack's a spirit, not a mortal. And not a child. And it's not spring. And..." Sera trailed off, eyes wide, as Jack spat several sentences without breathing. "German. Franken-words. That was amazing."

"Uh, what?"

North glanced over at them, and then did a double take. Immediately after he looked pathetically grateful.

"I don't know what a pus-encrusted, rot-blooded face-worm is, but I'd rather like to find out." Sera stepped around Jack, who didn't seem to notice, and sat down on a corner of North's desk. "Hey, kiddo, how are you doing?"

North's grateful expression immediately turned into a scowl. "I am not a child. Stop calling me a child. And make him stop yelling!"

"Aw, you're so small and cute!" Sera pinched North's cheek.

Aster ignored the kerfuffle, and stepped in front of Jack. The werewolf moved around him, his flailing hands getting wilder as he circled the furniture. Aster frowned, and got in the way again. Jack's eyes were blue, the snarling was violent, and the volume hadn't decreased one bit the entire time.

And Jack was ignoring him.

Which was _not_ the most important thing, here, it was just - Jack was ignoring him.

Aster stepped in front of Jack again, and this time when the werewolf went to sidestep him, he wrapped an arm around Jack's chest. Jack spun on Aster with a snarl, eyes flashing red, before he stopped. An expression of confusion warred with the already present anger, before his eyes faded back to blue and he stared up at the Pooka, head tilted.

"Hey, mate. Remember other people exist again, yeah?"

Jack blinked, shook his head, and muttered... something... in German. "Yes, my Bunny," he said, an unfamiliar drag to his words. "I am just being very angry with - with high handed, malamute-bred _idiots_."

He'd have to get Jack to speak in a German accent more often. Old German accent. It wasn't quite like the modern one - and he had to focus. Jack was staring at him. North was staring at him. Sera was laughing at him.

"Didn't figure malamute was an insult." Wasn't that a type of Alaskan -

"They are very stubborn dogs, it's an insult." Okay, maybe not. Aster wrapped his arms around Jack, and looked over at North and Sera.

"So, what happened?" he asked.

North gestured at the window. "Jack flew into window like bird. Smashed through, _un_ like bird. Started yelling. Am Russian, not German, I don't understand what was said!"

"I understand," Sera said, eyes glittering. "And I'm interested in hearing more." A gust of wind through the open window made them all shiver. "Though, perhaps in a different room."

* * *

Silver wanted to prowl the room. Jack wanted to stare at - who even _was_ she, anyways? He'd been so angry he hadn't noticed her or Bunny entering the study. Heck, he hadn't even noticed _his_ entrance into the study, but apparently it'd involved going headfirst through a pane of glass. He'd just been warring between _find the fucker and tear him to pieces_ and _get reinforcements first **and then** tear the fucker to pieces_.

Gathering reinforcements would probably work better if he used English. All of the Guardians knew English.

Still... Jack drummed his fingers against his staff. Strange, unknown woman was very strange. Possibly a little too young to be an actual, full-grown woman, seeing as she barely looked fourteen, but with spirits, who actually knew? She was taller than he was by half an inch, and, well. If a tree could be turned into a human, or a human into a tree, and then given overalls, a lab coat, and mad scientist goggles, than the result would look more than a little like this woman.

Very strange indeed. He didn't want to take his eyes off her. She probably bit.

"I have sent summons to Tooth and Sandy, they will be here when they can." North interpreted his glance at the door. "Larisa cannot be here, she is visiting grandmother. Maybe not hers," he allowed, "but a grandmother."

Jack blinked. "Any reason why?"

"I try not to ask such questions." North gestured towards the seats, though it wasn't really needed. The woman was already sitting down, studying a ficus - probably a ficus - plant beside her chosen spot. Bunny was already sitting, space available beside him on the loveseat. Jack was in no mood to sit down, so he shook his head, and started pacing.

Silver roused, angrier than Jack could ever remember him being. There'd probably been moments to equal this rage, but if so, Jack hadn't been conscious for them. This time, well... Silver wanted to rip the marauder to pieces. Jack was thinking fondly of that old skinning knife he'd had, back in the day. It'd worked a treat on deer, bear, that one boar, and countless foxes and weasels, it'd probably do just fine on a - a misshapen, domineering beast!

He was aware, distantly, of the other three talking quietly to each other. Jack had half-expected questions, but they were apparently waiting for the other two to arrive. Good. He only wanted to talk about this once. As it was, he couldn't help but mutter insults and curses under his breath.

"That's hardly polite." Jack flinched, twisting to stare at the door, and at Tooth. Sandy followed her through before the door could begin to swing shut.

"Ah, good, we are all here. Now, perhaps, we can find out what brought Jack into my office, yelling vile things, hm?" North raised his eyebrows at Jack.

Jack just stared back at him. North was two centuries and ninety-three years old. Jack had at least three decades on him. It was the younger winter spirit who blinked first, and at that Jack relaxed.

"Yeah. I guess. Since I did break your window."

Sandy plucked a shard of glass off Jack's collar, and frowned.

"I heal! I'm already healed! See?"

The dreamweaver did not look appeased, but he did sit down beside Tooth.

Jack frowned, eyeing the strange woman again. No one else was questioning her presence. He supposed that meant he couldn't question it either. She was probably one of North's friends. And he'd probably missed her the same way he'd missed Bunny, too angry to notice the world around him.

As for the cause of his anger... His staff actually creaked in his grip, the wood stressed enough to make noise. Jack relaxed his grip, though it was difficult. He wanted to find that intruder and wring their scrawny little neck -

"Jack." Tooth leaned forward, the movement catching his attention the way her voice had not. "What's wrong?"

He growled, and forced his shoulders to relax. They wanted to pop, twist, into the bear-like forelimbs of a werewolf. "There's an intruder in my woods."

"I reckon that doesn't mean some mortal's wandered in and set up camp." Bunny sounded calm, and looked worried. Silver immediately dropped his rage, leaving Jack staggering as the wolf switched to concern and a touch of shame. It was suddenly easier to think, with only the human side of him angry enough to kill.

"A spirit." His lips twitched, a spot of humour suddenly occurring to him. "My woods have been taken over by the big, bad wolf."

The odd woman laughed, wheezing rather like the neighbor's donkey had. A very human sound, that. Only a human could sound so... ridiculous while laughing. Whoever she was, at least she wasn't one of the misleading and untrustworthy fae.

"If this new guy's the big, bad wolf, then what are you?" she asked, grinning. "You have to have some kind of title, after all. Especially if you want to challenge this guy."

Jack blinked. "I've never thought about what people call me. Why do I need a title?"

"Because then you're a name, worthy of claiming a territory in the spirit world." She tapped one brown finger against lips the colour of oak leaves. "I know! You're Jack Frost, the white wolf of winter. So why haven't you killed this guy yet?"

Jack's expression darkened, Silver rousing to a fury again. "That," he growled, "is where things get _complicated_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Jack called himself the white wolf of winter before (unless, of course, I'm remembering my own stuff wrong, entirely possible) but now it's his official title. Poor him.


	9. Chapter Eight

Tooth held a glass of ice and scotch to her forehead. "Let me get this straight," she said. Her feathers were slicked down, her eyes were clenched shut, and she had the little wrinkles beside her nose that Jack had _just_ learnt meant she had a headache. "You can't kill this intruding werewolf spirit, because mortal werewolves revealed their existence to the world, and the current level of _believe in the big, bad wolf_ means he's healing almost instantly?"

"That's my best guess." Jack opened his mouth to continue, and Sandy wagged a finger at him. Right, not his turn yet.

"And, when you went to attack this werewolf anyways, because, and I quote, _everyone has trouble healing from decapitation_ , you heard a voice telling you to go and you went?"

Silver grumbled at the reminder. "Yeah." Jack told himself he wasn't pouting. Because he wasn't. He was plotting the intruder's demise. Totally a different thing.

Tooth sipped at her drink, and cracked one eye open to look at him. "You... you do realize you don't have to do anything you don't want to, right?"

"Actually," Jack and the odd woman said, at the same time. They turned to look at each other.

"You go, you're an actual werewolf. Speaking of..."

Bunny held up a hand. "You can ask for a spit sample later, Sera. Go on, Jackie."

"Spit... You know what, no, I don't want to know." Jack shook his head, and looked over at Tooth again. "There's actually three, well, three types of werewolves, I guess you could say. The dominants." He flicked up one finger. "Submissive," another finger, "and omegas."

Bunny twitched, but didn't speak. Jack couldn't smile, exactly, but he did quirk his lips up at Bunny. "Despite the BDSM theme, there's... actually... Never mind. Thought process for another time. Most werewolves are dominant; hurt them, the wolf comes forward and they hurt you back. Challenge them, the wolf comes forward and they make you regret it. They give the orders, everyone lower in rank has to obey. The highest ranked dominant wolf in a pack is called the alpha.

"Submissive wolves are pretty much the opposite of dominants. Hurt them, the human comes forward. Challenge them, they back down. They follow orders. And every single dominant wants to cuddle and protect them, because submissive wolves are _safe_. An injured, dominant-minded werewolf among a bunch of other dominant-minded wolves can and probably will get killed. A dominant-minded werewolf with a submissive is perfectly safe.

"Omega wolves are outside the pack structure. They don't have to obey any orders, they can stare down any dominant wolf, but they also signal to all the other wolves in the pack that they're super-submissive, protect at all costs."

Jack closed his fist. "I'm an _omega_. No one should be able to give me orders and have them stick."

There was a brief silence, one North broke. "Would explain Naughty List record."

The odd woman, Sera, giggled at that. "Back to the subject. Do you have any idea how this new spirit could give you orders?"

"No clue." Jack bounced his staff off his calf a few times. "Only wolf who can talk mind to mind is in Montana, and is watched by a shaman. Can't kill him, Mr. Spirit-Sight would spot me in an instant." Drat it all. If werewolves had to be killed when they got crazy from being too old, why wasn't the oldest and craziest of them okay to kill?

"Well..." Tooth and Sandy shared a complicated look, with several expressions. They turned back to the group. "If this wolf is a spirit, they can't actually hurt anyone, surely."

"Maybe," North allowed. "Or it could be like Redcaps and Rusalka. Believe they can hurt you, they can. Hm?"

"Plenty of spirits today able to hurt folks. Kids don't walk through us even when they believe." Bunny tapped a finger against his chin. " _But_ , we don't know anything about this wolf. His intentions might be - don't glare like that, Jack - _might_ be honourable. Keeping folks from getting lost in the woods... well, as long as he just gives 'em a scare, I don't see that we can act against him for that."

"He ordered me around!"

"And might be female," Tooth muttered. Jack heard her, and by the amused twitch of an ear, so did Bunny.

"Female werewolves get their status from the males," Jack said. "It's dumb and it's stupid, so don't glare at me, but unmated females rank below any submissive wolves."

Tooth downed the rest of her scotch. "I really want to meet a few werewolves now."

Jack's grin was all teeth. "I really wanna watch that meeting."

Sandy waved his arms, and flashed several symbols. Bunny nodded.

"You're right, we're drifting off topic. We have to check this new spirit out. I know you wanna dismember him badly," Bunny said, looking at Jack, "but we can't just kill every spirit we don't like. If he's a halfway decent bloke we'll convince him to move to a different forest and keep an eye on him. If he's not, you're the only werewolf, rest of us should be safe from voices in our head and orders we have to follow."

"You're missing the point." Nope, not whining... well, maybe a little bit. "I'm omega. I'm not supposed to follow any orders at all!"

"You didn't follow your parents' orders?" Tooth asked, standing up.

"Of course I did. But that's different. I wanted to." Jack spun his staff through his fingers. "So... who wants to help me decapitate this guy?"

"Observation first!" North barked.

* * *

Now that he was paying attention, and not just smiling at Jack like a besotted sap, Burgess forest was giving him the _creeping horrors_. It wasn't the way everything went dim under the trees, leaving Tooth and North cursing and half blind. It wasn't the smell, rotting leaves, rotting wood, fungi and mold, and a touch of predator musk. It wasn't the way everything looked, scraggly branches and mushrooms growing everywhere, creeping vines and ferns and bushes growing tall and thick despite the lack of light.

Aster had been in many a place, some of them his own backyard, that had looked creepier than this. Amusement parks closed down for the season. Airports, closed, with no one but the odd security guard patrolling. Doll collectors' houses. His grandma's place, with the 'just a replica of him, really' that'd looked a dead ringer for his deceased grandpa, right down to the fur.

Clearly, magic was causing the nerves. Magic, and the fact that they were trying to hunt down a spirit version of an apex predator. One given to going starkers and killing for fun, because it was Tuesday or whatever.

"I don't like this," Jack huffed, dropping down to walk next to Aster. The Pooka controlled his flinch away from the sudden movement. "I'm supposed to be the scariest thing in this forest."

He had to take a moment at that. "Jack, any... any _fear factor_ you have goes away if there's the slightest chance of a child in the area. You're cute, not scary."

"Cute to you. Lots of people thought I was plenty freaky, before the spirit deal." Jack waved one hand in dismissal, and used his staff to pull a cluster of poison ivy out of his path. "He should be showing up soon. Bunch of people looking for him, armed to the teeth and ready for action... that's every horror movie setup right there."

"Thought that was those college-age kids looking for a private spot to have a root." Was that - bird. He almost wished Sera had come with, her connection to the earth would've been invaluable. Except for the little part where she had trouble distinguishing between friend and foe during a fight, and her choice of weapons, she made a good battlefield companion.

"Those are the other horror movies," Jack said, watching their left. "The ones trying to convince everyone not to have pre-marital sex. Or post-marital, sometimes."

Human media was weird. "What if he doesn't show?"

Jack growled. "He'll show. If I have to uproot the entire forest, one tree at a time."

Sandy heard, and turned around, question marks dancing around his head like a kind of crown. Aster waved him off. "Don't do that. It's a nice forest."

"Most of the time," Jack agreed. He went back to looking around, and after a few minutes, jumped back up to join Tooth and Sandy in flying overhead.

Aster sped up until he was beside North, and slowed to the human's pace. "Don't like this," he finally said.

"Da. Reminds me of hunting bear, smart one with taste for human." North kept one hand on the hilt of his swords, and beneath his heavy coat, his blackened breastplate reflected green and brown, instead of glittering in the light.

It made Aster think about his own armour, safely tucked away in the Warren, and useless to him right now. Not that it mattered, much. Enchanted silk and leather wouldn't do much against fang and claw. He'd be better off dodging, especially since Sera hadn't had an answer to his question.

He didn't think a werewolf could change him, either into another werewolf, or a kelpie. But there was always that chance... and besides, they were dealing with a spirit. Jack aside, Aster didn't think there'd been a werewolf spirit before, and the rules might be a little different.

The group fell silent, after that, and continued to search the forest. Aster dropped down to all fours and moved to the front of the group. The other Guardians were at his back, so it was safe enough, and if he was attacked, he was faster this way.

Nothing attacked him, which set his fur on end, just like _everything else_ in this forest. He bounded around a bush, and sat up on his heels. Rotating his ears got him a lot of leaves rustling, a few brave songbirds calling, and some squirrels in the underbrush, but nothing else.

"Hold on..." He twisted to look over his shoulder.

The other Guardians were not in view. And he couldn't hear them.

At that moment he heard a low, menacing growl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I didn't realize I'd skipped a week, but it's sort of a good thing since next chapter is the first big fight, and it is kicking my butt. Fingers crossed I'm able to write it properly.
> 
> (Fingers crossed I recover in time to write it. I'm currently ill. The chapter isn't the only thing kicking my butt. Next chapter may be delayed for health reasons.)


	10. Chapter Nine

****

The creature that stalked out of the shadows could only be called a 'wolf' the same way a tiger could be called a 'cat'. Aster had thought the werewolf spirit would be like the mortals, about two-hundred pounds, maybe two-and-fifty, and roughly the same size as actual wolves.

It wasn't. The thing hulked at almost five feet tall at the shoulder, easily the size of a large black bear and looking the same weight. Its shoulders were broad, articulated like that bear, heavily muscled and looking _wrong_ on the lupine body. The haunches looked lower and smaller as a result, and Aster was reminded of hyenas. The head was almost entirely wolf, though the teeth - lips wrinkled back to expose every last one - were sharper and the canines longer than any animal could lay claim to.

Well, maybe a sabre-toothed cat could've beaten those chompers, but those critters were dead and gone.

Aster eyed the werewolf, particularly the fur, and could have groaned. The rest of the werewolf could have passed for a mortal of the species - albeit a large, monstrous one - but the fur revealed the truth of the matter. Black as tar, it looked like it was dripping off the werewolf's body, where it didn't seem to smoke and smoulder into the air.

"You're a bloody fearling, aren't you?" he asked, staring into sulphur-yellow eyes. The werewolf - the _fearling_ \- seemed to grin. "Bugger."

The wolf-fearling launched towards him. Aster managed to dodge out of the way, boomerang in one hand and a black egg in the other. Even as he was twisting to roll backwards, he threw the egg into the wolf-fearling's face.

The black egg shattered, the ghost pepper juice and ground glass splattering into the beast's eyes. It howled, and clawed at its face.

Aster used the distraction to toss first one, than the other boomerang at the beast. It must not've been as hurt from the black egg as he'd hoped, as it dodged both. At least, for the initial throws. There was a satisfactory _thunk_ when the first 'rang bounced off the beast's skull, though the second missed entirely.

He caught both 'rangs, and backed up, feeling each step before committing his weight to it. The beast had stopped clawing at its face, and glared at him. Its eyes were a touch red about the edges, fur matted down across its face. There were deep gouges across its muzzle, but Aster couldn't tell if its blood blended into its fur, or if it hadn't bled at all.

Besides, the gouges were already healing over. Even as he stared the beast down, they closed over and vanished as if they'd never existed.

"Bugger," he said again, and raised both boomerangs.

He should run. He should definitely shove his pride in a hole and bolt. Find the others, so they could surround this monster and _deal_ with it. He should definitely take off as fast as he could, except -

The beast grinned at him again - a grin for sure, no question - and backed up into the shadows.

And vanished.

Yeah, except for that. The fearling-wolf had claimed the forest, and clearly just like regular fearlings, _could move through shadows_.

There were a lot of shadows in this section of forest.

Aster turned and stepped into the strongest patch of light in the small clearing. It left him surrounded by shadows, but better that than in the shadows himself. At least this way, he could presumably see the beast coming.

He didn't see it coming. He'd twisted towards a bush, rustling all out of time with the wind, and his leg caught fire.

The beast snarled and wrenched him off his feet, fangs buried up to the gums in his thigh.

Aster howled, twisted, and brought the sharp side of his boomerang down onto the back of the beast's neck. It dropped him, snarling, and snapped at his arm. Aster wrenched away as he hit the ground, and pain shot up through his neck. Pulled a muscle, he supposed, in the breath between pain and panic.

He rolled, and slashed at the beast's mouth with a boomerang. It caught the weapon and wrenched it free of Aster's grasp.

Even as he got to his feet, weight half-off his injured leg, the beast grinned at him again. And snapped the boomerang in two with its fangs.

* * *

"Hurry!" Jack followed Tooth through the trees, eyes burning from more than the wind. Red fogged the edges of his vision, only Silver's faltering control keeping the rage from consuming him entirely.

Behind him, Sandy carried North. The sleigh made no sound, but the toy maker's cursing more than made up for it. If Jack was close enough to grab Tooth's tail-feathers, North was close enough to grab Jack's heels.

It would keep them from getting separated. From another of their number vanishing around a bush and then vanishing entirely, like Bunny -

He somehow had breath left to snarl.

Tooth, with the speed and agility he otherwise admired, turned a corner almost exactly on a dime, apparently heedless of the way Jack had to bounce off two tree trunks before he was flying in the same direction. Sandy had it both easier and harder; his sand, after all, was under his complete control. On the other hand, he had to deal with North, whose cursing took on a suddenly panicked edge.

Jack couldn't care about that, not really. Tooth could follow Bunny - he hated her for that, right now, even as he loved her, because _he couldn't_. There was no sight no scent no sound he was hunting _blind_ -

"Close," Tooth gasped, and pulled a sword from what appeared to be nothing. After a moment's shock, that even managed to drive most of the red from his vision, Jack realized Tooth was wearing a feathered tunic that blended in so well with her own feathers it was practically invisible. The sword hilt must have been under the tunic, positioned in such a way that it hadn't caused any odd lumps or wrinkles or visible hilt.

She glanced back over her shoulder, and grinned. Jack grinned back, feral and hungry.

Then, with a ululating scream, Tooth descended through the sudden screen of tree branches, an avenging angel followed by the rest of them.

Jack saw Bunny.

Jack _roared_.

The other werewolf flinched away, otherwise Tooth would have decapitated him then and there. She followed after him, North landing halfway between Bunny and the other werewolf with a wince-inducing thud. Sandy moved to block the other werewolf's retreat, and at that point Jack stopped paying attention, his focus shifting entirely to his Bunny.

"Jack?" Bunny shifted, and winced. His hands were already clamped down on his thigh; Jack added to the pressure, blood immediately staining his skin a dark red.

"Cavalry's here." Literally; Tooth's sword, at least, was curved like a cavalry blade. "Bandages?"

"Lower pouch, the big one." Jack growled when his fingers slid over the leather and the brass catch - should've gotten the bandages first - and pulled out the first roll of bandages. He wrapped the wound with the ease of long practice, and tore the length of bandage free with his teeth.

"Ta, mate." Bunny slumped backwards against the ground, looking dazed. He was probably pale beneath his fur. Jack couldn't have stopped the whine that escaped his throat if his life depended on it, and he leaned closer to check his rabbit's eyes. Which suddenly widened, and -

He bounced off the tree with an all too familiar crack, and didn't manage to hit the ground before fangs were tearing deep into his side. The werewolf shook him back and forth, until Jack's flesh lost the contest and tore, sending him flying again.

Once the world stopped spinning, he took a breath, a little surprised he still _could_. "Ow," he decided, and forced himself upright.

Sandy had distracted the werewolf, but there was something wrong, something -

"Oh. Hey, Shenlob!" Jack grinned when the Shenlob turned towards him. "You're just as ugly as your brother, you know that?"

The Shenlob shook off the darkening sand, which quickly turned golden as Sandy reclaimed it, and roared.

Jack roared back.

Nowhere near impressive enough, he thought, and launched himself at the Shenlob.

He was aware, distantly, of Sandy moving back and hovering over Bunny. Hopefully Sandy knew enough about medicine to be able to help. Tooth and North flanked the Shenlob, but the fight was currently all Jack.

He was perfectly fine with that.

... Less fine with the taste of that black tar-stuff dripping off the Shenlob, but whatever, it made the beast scream and panic. He'd survive.

Things blurred, blood loss and rage, pain in his side and across his shoulders where the beast clawed him. The taste of tar and rot on his tongue. The feel of flesh giving beneath his fingers as he clawed into the Shenlob's side.

And then he was flung to the side, the Shenlob screaming. Jack tried to push back up onto his feet, but his arms gave out. Right, right, super-fast healing only helped if he stopped and let it work. Passing out would be dramatic, but not exactly helpful.

North's battle cries and Tooth's taunts sounded like they were coming from underwater. Or maybe Jack was underwater. He hoped not. Drowning sucked.

The last thing he really heard was a triumphant "He's running away!" Well, then. No need to cling to consciousness. He was tired. He deserved to take a nap.

Even a panicking wolf screaming in the back of his mind couldn't keep him awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tooth's sword is a Talwar, a single-edged, curved sword. I realized my first choice for Tooth's weapon, the Khanda, is _huge_ and while I fully believe Tooth can totally swing one of those monsters all day, it's a hand-and-a-half sword (or, someone Tooth's size, two handed sword) and I just feel she's more of a speed fighter. The Talwar is a single-handed sword, from what I can see, so despite Wikipedia's failure to tell me when the first Talwar got waved around or if it was used by royalty or not, I went with the smaller sword.
> 
> Besides, she's a Queen, she can use whatever weapon she wants.


	11. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for suicidal thoughts? Not a lot of emotion or despair, but there is a brief thought about it. I can't even tell you which parts to skip, if that bothers you. Maybe skip down to where Tooth starts talking?

Silver did not like problems. Problems, like vicious men or insane werewolves, needed to die. When problems were harder to kill, he shoved the problem at Jack and let him freeze them instead. Like going through people. Jack could make the temperature drop until hypothermia set in, and that was good. Not as good as fangs and claws and blood, but still good.

This... was not a problem he could kill.

Jack was gone. That was a problem. Half of one was not stable, and Silver was only half. Jack was the other half, the mind controlling the wolf. Wolf alone went insane and was killed. Silver had seen that, many, many times. Always a good thing, but now, he was alone. He was wolf and he was alone.

He was going to kill people if they did not kill him first.

He did not think they could kill him first.

His friends were good people. If he were wolf-shaped, snarling and enraged, he thought they might be able to bring themselves to end his life. Little else would; they had drowned many times, he and Jack, after becoming a spirit.

Silver, after a moment, began to drum his fingers. It was slow at first, deliberate finger-tap followed by deliberate finger-tap, but began to speed up as he got used to it. Wolf paws did not have very mobile toes, and the few times he was in control and human-shaped, he was fighting. Fists were more effective than wiggling fingers, then.

How much time did he have? Most werewolves died long before old age drove the human-mind to oblivion. They lost fights, or forgot to take care when they were injured. He looked down at his heavily bandaged side, and sighed. A mortal-wolf would not have been able to get back up, after fangs had sliced into and then through his torso. A mortal-wolf would not have continued to fight, because a mortal would have been dead. Even as a spirit, though, that had been pushing things.

Jack was stubborn. Silver thought he would have been more sensible, but he had been nothing but rage and blood-thirst, so perhaps not.

His friends were Guardians. They were supposed to kill monsters. Werewolves were monsters. He was a werewolf. Therefore...

But did monsters spend minutes - half of one hour, now - contemplating monsters and what to do when they lost their mind? Did that make him a monster? Or something else?

He sighed again. He did not like problems. This was a problem. It was very annoying.

He could not even kill this problem. He was too hard to kill, to manage it himself.

Silver looked down at his drumming fingers. Perhaps he should think of something else. It was not currently a problem. He had not gone mad yet. Jack would come back. He always came back. Usually when Silver got bored of killing trees and animals that shrieked and ran and bled - and thinking of that was not boring. He was hungry now.

Food. He would get food. And eat the food. And then he would think about problems.

But thinking about food brought a new problem. He needed to leave the bed in order to get the food. And North's chief female had told him, very strongly, not to move.

Problem. He disliked this problem. But there was a solution, and it did not even involve killing the chief female.

"Tooth," he barked, catching the flutter-bright female's attention. Wait. Something more important than food. "How is Bunny?" His mate was still in the other room, the one used for stitching wounds closed.

"I'll check and find out. Oh. Are you hungry yet?"

Yes. He had said no when she asked the first time. He had been confused and searching in his mind for Jack. His head had echoed and it had been unpleasant. But now he was done thinking, and had given up searching. Jack would be found when he was ready to be found.

"Yes. I can eat." He could eat with the things called manners, even. Jack had done that enough times Silver could mimic the actions. It would be annoying, but he could do it.

"One moment." Tooth patted him on the foot as she fluttered to the door. Silver twitched, but fluttery or not, Tooth was pack. Annoying pack, sometimes, but his sister had been annoying sometimes too. That did not make her, either her, less pack.

Ears were not chew toys and fingers did not go in his mouth, but he would not hurt pack for that.

Silver watched as Tooth spoke with a yeti, and wondered if he could do that and get the same reaction. He did not like the yeti. They were loud, and annoying. They were big and aggressive and smelled bad. But Jack tolerated them after last year. Jack would be upset when he came back, if Silver had hurt any of the yeti.

Badly hurt any of the yeti. Sometimes injuries just happened.

"They'll be back with something for you to eat," Tooth said. "I'll check on Bunny now."

Silver would have been happy if Tooth had done things in another order, Bunny first and food second, but he understood. A hungry werewolf was especially dangerous. She would not want him to get hungry, it was too dangerous.

Tooth fluttered into the stitching room. The open door let scents escape. Silver sniffed the air, and frowned. There was a lot of blood. Bunny had already lost a lot of blood. He did not need to lose more. The Shenlob had hurt Bunny. He wanted to kill the Shenlob.

The Shenlob was a problem. It was a challenger in his territory. It was a threat to his pack and those he had claimed as his own. Burgess was not a village anymore, but it was still his. Nothing was allowed to threaten his territory or the people living within it.

He had to kill the Shenlob. Once his side had healed, he would hunt it again.

The wound in his side itched. It was a healing itch, which was good. But it was a slow itch. He needed food.

Tooth was back. Silver carefully did not jump. It was hard, thinking about things and keeping track of people at the same time. It was not her fault. She did not mean to surprise him. He was fairly certain.

"They're just finishing up right now. Good thing Pooka can accept human plasma, though not the platelets or red blood cells... They've got him on an IV and they're giving him fluids for his blood pressure." Tooth bit her bottom lip. "He actually looks a lot better than you do, but I think that's the fur. I guess he can't really look pale, can he?"

"No," Silver agreed. "But I am supposed to be pale."

"Pale, yes, bloodless, no." Correct. He was not a vampire.

The conversation stopped there, but the food arrived. He did not think Tooth noticed his lack of words. If she did, she must have put it down to worry and hunger, because she did not mention it. However, the yeti's arrival with food had her jumping in the air.

Silver twitched. Fast movement. It was hard not to react. Harder not to react with violence.

He did not want to be violent to a member of the pack. That would be wrong.

Tooth directed the yeti in putting down the food. He did not think the yeti needed direction, but the gray-furred individual seemed to tolerate the flapping. Once the lap tray was in place, with several plates on the tray, the yeti left the room.

There was meat and vegetables, all cooked. There were round bread things. There was enough food for a snack. Silver supposed that was fair. He wanted to eat with Bunny, when the rabbit was awake.

He picked up a bread thing and nibbled carefully at one side. The bread thing was warm and puffy on the inside. He took a bigger bite and remembered to chew five times before swallowing.

He bit into the bread thing again, and stopped. There was meat inside the bread thing! It tasted like beef and spices, and he hummed when he chewed. It was good. He would insist on more bread things with dinner. Bunny ate meat, he would enjoy the bread thing. Silver would give him as many bread things as Bunny wanted.

Tooth sat beside the bed, watching him eat. Jack would have felt bothered by it. Silver ignored her. She was not hurting anyone.

"Jack?" she asked. She had waited for him to finish the bread things, so he stopped eating and looked at her. "Do you - was that... normal, for a werewolf?"

Was what normal for a werewolf? Eating the bread things? "You mean the Shenlob," he said. He did not think she meant the bread things. They were food, and they were tasty. Of course he was going to eat them.

"The - yes. Shenlob?"

Words. Words were like problems. Jack was supposed to take care of the words. Silver frowned, thinking. Tooth wanted more information about the Shenlob. He did not have a lot of information, though. So what could he tell her?

"Before, Easter. When everyone was captured." Tooth was pale, her eyes big and dark against her skin. She looked smaller than normal. If he were a normal werewolf, the vulnerability would have been tempting to hurt. He was glad he was not a normal werewolf. He wanted to tuck her into a nest and kill the threat.

Pitch was the threat that time. He could kill Pitch. Then Tooth would look less vulnerable.

Tooth was being patient with how long it took him to say words. Good pack. "Bunny ran out. A thing followed him. It was big, and ugly. It..." He groped for words. "It dripped darkness. I fought it. I beat it. I called it Shenlob. Then, the wolf in the forest. It dripped darkness." He shrugged. "Shenlob."

"Fearling," Tooth said. There was less fear in her expression now, the set of her shoulders, and a measure of admiration. "You fought a fearling? On your own?"

"I am the White Wolf of Winter." Was he white-furred? It had not been that way before. Perhaps it was now, though. He touched his hair. "It was a threat."

Tooth swallowed. "And the one in the forest?"

"Wolf. And Shenlob." Silver frowned at his empty plate. He had eaten without noticing. Pity; he would have preferred to savour the food. "Perhaps one ate the other."

Tooth shook her head. "Cheerful thought. We'll be ready for it next time. If it's a fearling of some kind, we have proper weapons that can really hurt it."

Perhaps he would wait for the rest of the pack. It would be rude to exclude them from the kill.

Silver settled back in the bed, resting against the pillows. Tooth did not seem bothered by the quiet; instead, she moved to the window across the room and opened it, admitting a small stream of tiny-flutters. The baby teeth. One of the baby teeth crossed the room and settled on his knee.

"Hello." Which one was this one? "Baby Tooth."

Her eyes got very wide, and she shivered. Silver decided against smiling in reassurance. He doubted it would make her feel good. "I am still sane."

She frowned at him.

"If that changes, I will find a way to deal with it myself."

After a minute's thought, Baby Tooth patted his knee, and settled down as though to stay.

Silver let her.


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing with last chapter, Silver really, really wants to kill everything. So warnings for that? I don't think there's any suicidal inclinations in this chapter, so it should be safe for that this time.

In his more lucid moments, he knew he was drugged to the proverbial gills, on the strongest medication available. Pooka were highly resistant to toxins, and all anaesthetic was, was poisoning the body enough to knock it out, but not kill it. Anyone else on the dosage he'd been given would've been dead in the first hour, probably along with one and a half elephants.

In his less lucid moments, Aster dreamed.

Well. Sort of.

A man with yellow eyes and black skin - true black, so dark it sucked in the light, a black hole in human shape - stalked him through scrubland. Wolves howled, and rabbits shrieked as they died. The stars wheeled overhead, leaving trails of light behind them, swirling and twisting into the constellations he'd known as a child, nebulae illuminating the red sand and baked-brown clay.

The scrub bushes whispered to him, a constant susurration in a language he'd forgotten he'd ever known. Yellow-eyed, black furred wolves appeared in the moonlight and vanished in the cloud-shadows. The man chasing him laughed, laughed, a horrible sound for the pleasant tone.

Ice, and the world spun opposite to the heavens, until he stood in a forest of trees and snow. The man chasing him changed, slid around and away and back again, skin gone bloodless, reflective, until he was so bright everything else was shadowed. His eyes blazed like twin suns, and still he laughed.

The wolves here were like him, with white fur that blended with the snow and ice. They chased him.

Aster ran. He ran, he ran, he ran out onto the ice and it shattered beneath his weight.

The man, the man who drank in the light, the man who cast it back to throw everything else into darkness, he was waiting.

And then Aster woke up.

Properly, this time.

He went limp against the mattress, the heart monitor easing to a steady beep as he calmed down. That'd been odd. He couldn't remember, not quite - something about stars? And snow?

"Bunny."

And wolves, he thought, and turned his head to look.

Jack's eyes gleamed red in the indirect, dim lighting. He always looked gaunt, but the way the shadows played over his face turned him skeletal. And his hair seemed to be getting long. Aster wanted to brush at it, sweep it away from Jack's eyes, but he suppressed the urge. He couldn't seem to move his hands, anyways.

"Hey," he rasped, throat dry and tongue feeling swollen and clumsy. He wrinkled his nose. Now that he was paying attention, his mouth tasted like medicinal tea and those horrible sour candies North threatened the elves with.

Jack might have smiled. "Here," he said. He picked up a cup half full of water, and stuck a straw in. "Drink this."

If not for the straw, the water might've spilled everywhere. A few drops still fell to the pillow, when Jack tilted the cup just a little too much. Aster didn't much care; the water was lukewarm, had probably been sitting for a few hours, and was sweeter than honey. His tongue, contrary to what normally happened when water was applied to - anything, really - shrank. His throat stopped aching.

And then Jack pulled the cup away.

"Hey!" At least he wasn't rasping now. "I wasn't done!"

"Water gone." Jack paused, eyes narrowed. " _The_ water _is_ gone." And then he growled, a small, grumpy sound.

"Been sitting up long?" Why else would Jack be having trouble with words?

The werewolf huffed, and did something just outside of Aster's field of vision. A moment later he held the cup back out, half-full of water again, this time with added ice chips. "Drink."

Somehow, the water had gotten even sweeter with the drop in temperature. Jack filled the cup three more times before Aster felt like he'd drunk all he could. Aster licked his lips, which compared to the rest of him were still dry and cracked, and studied Jack as best he could in the darkness.

He couldn't be as bad off as he looked, but Aster still looked around for a proper light. A bed lamp. As though reading his mind, or just better at guessing than North was, Jack got up and flicked a switch, turning on one of the overhead lights. Not one over Aster's bed, thankfully, and he still flinched a bit at the sudden brightness, but his eyes adjusted quickly.

Immediately, Jack looked better. The tight knot in Aster's stomach relaxed.

"So. I don't remember much."

The werewolf sat down, moving with exaggerated care. Ergonomic nothing, it was an ugly, fragile looking chair and Aster wouldn't have even trusted it.

"You bled. A lot." The red in Jack's eyes got stronger. "I fought the wolf. I bled. A lot. But I heal faster."

"True enough." And, apparently, had gone the entire time without sleep. Words were clearly difficult, and clipped just a bit by a German accent. "How long was I out?"

At that, Jack's face twisted in thought, and his fingers twitched. "One score. Nights. Twenty nights. Tomorrow twenty and one days. But you woke."

It didn't hurt to wiggle over to the side of the bed. It was just tiring. "Jack. Get over here."

"You are healing."

"I can heal just as well cuddling up with you as alone. I'll sleep better, actually, and that'll help me heal faster." The werewolf still looked doubtful. "C'mon, mate, you need the shut eye, and it'll help keep the dreams away."

"Dreams?" Jack sat down on the bed, and twisted to look at Aster. "What dreams?"

"The bloody awful kind that I get on pain medication." His arm would be numb by morning, Jack's head was heavy, but it was worth it. "Just... weird stuff. Talking trees, that sort of thing."

"I should turn the light off."

"Leave it." Aster rolled over onto his side, carefully. Most of the tubes and things had apparently been removed already, except for the cuff monitoring his blood pressure and pulse. Made curling around Jack easier. He tugged the blanket up a little more, until it shadowed their faces. "Tired enough y'don't have to."

"Yes," Jack agreed, one hand, always surprising with how large it was, curving over Aster's side. "Sleep."

Aster considered getting annoyed at the command, but Jack was just so cute, looking faintly grumpy and very tired, and conveying with the force of his blinks that he wasn't sleeping until Aster nodded off. He tucked Jack's head under his chin, and closed his eyes. Sleep sounded like a good idea.

* * *

Silver dozed, but he didn't dare fall asleep properly, not like this. Not without Jack, while his nose was pressed to the front of Bunny's neck.

The rabbit was very trusting. It was good, mates were supposed to trust each other, but it was also bad. Because Silver was alone. He wanted to kill something. The silence in his head was wrong, and maybe killing things would make the silence stop. He knew better, it never had before, but he still wanted.

Bunny would not be happy, to wake up to bodies piled around the bed. The chief male, North-named, would not be happy if Silver killed all the elk. They were special elk, apparently, and not for eating. Big and dangerous, and good to fight - but no, it would make everyone angry. He could handle anger, but not Bunny's anger. Or worse, Bunny's disappointment or fear.

So he had refrained from killing anything. Except the pillows. Those did not count. They just puffed into piles of feathers, they did not bleed. No one had yelled about the pillows. Which was good. He might have hit the person yelling.

He did not like this. He did not like this at all. When Jack returned, and he would, Silver would make clear how angry he was about being left alone.

He woke fully when the door opened. Silver kept his eyes closed until he knew they would be blue, and sat up. Bunny grumbled, arm flexing, and curled more so his nose pressed against the small of Silver's back. He touched the thick fur on the back of Bunny's neck, and looked at the door.

"Were you sleeping?" the chief female, Lar-woman asked.

"Yes." Mostly. It would be unwise to lie to the Lar-woman. She was dangerous, and not properly pack. Pack was for family, mates and puppies and siblings. Bunny was mate, so he was pack. The other werewolves would have been smarter to choose proper pack, over making all the different people stay together. There would be less fighting. But they wanted to be human, not wolf, which was strange. Most of them asked to become wolf.

Silver wrinkled his nose. He wanted to find the leader of the werewolves and kill him. Stupid, idiot man. Needed taught. Or better. Killed.

"Jack?" The Lar-woman looked worried, squinty around her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"

No. He was not. But he lifted his head and lied. "I am fine. Just tied."

"Bunny woke up?"

"Yes." Bunny was waking up. The grumpy sounds were on the bare edge of his hearing, even for him. It was adorable.

Silver glared at the Lar-woman when he was done cooing over how cute Bunny was. She smiled at him.

It would be bad manners to kill her for that. He still wanted to.

"Nrrrrrrm." Bunny snuffled against Silver's skin, having pushed the bottom of the sweater up with his nose. "Wrrrry 'waked?"

"I do not understand." Were those words?

Bunny squinted one eye open, looking bleary and upset. "Why 'wake?"

Those were words. He was surprised. "Because." He could not remember the Lar-woman's name. He needed a better reason. "Breakfast." It was time for food. Wasn't it? He looked over at the chief female, who looked amused again.

Perhaps still amused. Not again amused. It was hard to tell.

"Breakfast can indeed be arranged. Would you like anything in specific?"

Silver pressed his fingers against Bunny's shoulder to stop the growl. "Food."

"Eggs," Bunny said, and sat up. He moved slow and stiff, but not painful. Silver still wanted to find the enemy wolf and _bite_ them. Right in the neck. "Eggs, and ham, and toast. Jam. Orange juice."

The Lar-woman nodded. "Easily enough. Any complaints, Jack?"

Only that they kept calling him the wrong thing. He could not say that, however. He shook his head. "Food," he repeated, a hint of demand entering his voice. Neither person reacted. Perhaps they had not noticed. That was good. Supposed to be good. It should not upset him, but it did.

Bunny. If he focused on his mate, the desire to kill everyone around him weakened. It did not go away. He did not think it ever went away. He could not recall a time when he did not want to kill something. But Bunny made it easier to tell himself 'no'.

He wanted Jack to come back. Jack could tell him 'no'. Silver would not have to think about it.

Silver turned and pressed his face against Bunny's chest. The rabbit hesitated, and then hugged him. Restraint, but good restraint, helping to control the rage. Silver relaxed, a little. Bunny smelt good, healthy again, and it was nice to be small against another person. He had not felt that way since he was a puppy.

"Something wrong?" Bunny asked.

They were alone in the room. If there was anyone he could trust, it was his mate. "Jack is gone," Silver said, shoulders tensing all over again. "I am alone."

"Jack is - you're the wolf." Bunny stopped breathing.

Silver lifted his head, confused. Why was Bunny afraid? "What is it?" he asked, and looked around. The room had not changed. No one had entered. "What is wrong? Should I kill it?"

Bunny began to breathe again shallow and fast. "No, no, don't - don't kill anything. You're the wolf. Jack's wolf, I mean."

"Yes." Had he not said that? "I am Silver."

"Silver." Bunny pressed the palm of one hand to Silver's cheek. He blinked, confused. But it felt nice. He leaned into the touch. Bunny's hand was warm, and smelled nice. His palm was soft against Silver's cheek.

After a moment, Bunny pulled him back into a hug. Silver went happily, and rubbed his nose into the soft fur of Bunny's throat.

"Bloody, buggering hell," the rabbit whispered. Silver did not understand why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I start to get ahead in my writing, something happens to ensure I can only finish one chapter a week. This week, I've joined a gym, if only because my haphazard approach to personal fitness was starting to _really annoy me_. I'm not always a perfectionist, but when I am, it's great for self-sabotage. -rolls eyes-
> 
> Anyways, look, someone's figured out there is a problem! What're you going to do about that, Bunny?


	13. Chapter Twelve

His leg was still tender, but not so much Aster needed help walking from his bed in the medical wing to the meeting room. It didn't stop the five yeti from offering aid, the elf driving some kind of wind-up car pulling a cart offering him a ride, or North offering to carry him like a fainted maiden. Silver (not Jack, now that he knew, _definitely not Jack_ ) just stayed close, and stared a little too intently at everyone else.

At least everyone else was sane. Tooth frowned at North when they entered.

"Leave Bunny alone. He's literally steps away from a chair. You just want blackmail photos."

North drew himself up, somehow expanding sideways like a puffer fish. "I do not! Much. I am simply concerned about my injured comrade, wishing to give aid however I may -"

"You do realize 'comrade', from a Russian, is highly stereotypical these days?" Aster sank down onto a loveseat, and pulled Silver down next to him. The werewolf looked delighted, and also a little too interested in the couch cushions. Since the worst that would happen was stuffing everywhere and no blood, Aster didn't try to put a stop to... anything.

Besides, North was talking. "Am Russian," he said, deliberately thickening his already impossible accent. "Can be stereotype if wish to. Is all you sad, little people who cannot mock Mother Russia."

Silver threw a pillow at North's face. It knocked the man's hat off.

"Rude," Tooth said, looking pleased at the interplay. Sandy held up a card marked with a shaky '8'. Actual pen, he must've thought it worth the effort.

"You should be on my side," North told Silver, as he moved to a chair.

Silver leaned against Aster's side. "No."

"Right." There was not enough coffee in the world for this. Not that he was allowed any, after his friends had mistaken his racing heartbeat for a lack of one. To be fair, his pulse had been so fast it'd rivalled hummingbird wings. He still didn't know how they'd missed him breathing, though.

Silver twisted and looked up at him, red glittering at the back of his pupils. It could've just been reflected light. Aster doubted it.

"We have a problem," he said, and wrapped an arm around Silver's shoulders.

Sandy eyed Silver, and then stared at Aster. He formed a wolf, and a question mark. Aster nodded back.

Unfortunately, North and Tooth had missed that, so they started talking about the fearling. The _werewolf_ fearling. Granted, no one knew that much about fearlings, aside from Pitch, and no one was going to ask _him_ anything, but the idea of a fearling combining with something else... It was worrying. Currently less immediate than the fact that Silver had admitted he was likely to go berserk and start killing everything he could get his hands on, but still worrying.

"Give you few days," North said, with a disturbing amount of enthusiasm, "and then we break out moonbeam weapons and go for bear. Hah! Cut fearling right out of werewolf!"

"I don't think that's quite possible." Tooth frowned. "Although - do we even know that it's properly a werewolf? It might just be one of those wolf spirits that show up every now and then. Usually after some idiot insists his dog is a wolf-dog and it gets loose..."

"We have a bigger problem than that," Aster said, and was ignored.

"People do that? Why? Gets innocent dog killed."

"Owning a wolf-dog is badass, apparently. They're the same people who complain about taxes while driving on city streets, probably."

"Never understood that. In Russia -"

"Russia's communist, North, and you're off topic. Fearling."

"Have good skinning knife with moonblade enchantment."

Aster sighed, and shared a Look with Sandy. "Someone's gonna have to -"

Silver pulled from his grasp, twisted onto the floor, grabbed North by the boot, pulled, and even as North fell back-first to the ground, pounced.

In less than three seconds, North was pinned and Silver was perched on the man's chest, unnaturally still but for his fingers, which kept twitching.

"Jack!" Tooth started forward, but Sandy caught her, a blanket of sand pinning her arms against her side. "Sandy, what -?"

Aster slid off his seat. "Silver," he crooned. The werewolf didn't look away from North, but he did tilt his head slightly, bringing one ear further back. "Silver, you wannta let North up now?"

The werewolf growled. His fingers stopped twitching, hooked into claws. Aster edged closer. He was almost in grabbing distance now, but he paused, waiting.

Silver's mouth worked, twisting around as though he had to chew a bit before he could speak. When he did open his mouth, his voice was low, half-growl. "I don't...?"

"Don't?" A little closer now.

"Don't... want to?" Silver looked away from North, eyes dull, almost entirely red. "Hurt him. Don't want."

"Then you're gonna want to get up now." Slow and steady, he held out one hand. Aster didn't quite hold his breath, but he wanted to.

Silver looked from Aster's hand down to North, and back again. Fast as he'd pounced North, he grabbed Aster's hand, and held tight.

* * *

Hard. Hard, hard, hard. His head swam. In confusion, not water. Heads without bodies sank and died.

Silver kept his eyes closed. Colour pulsed against his eyelids in time with his heart. Rage. Shame. Hunger. He had attacked pack. That was wrong. But - _loud_ **weak** _not looking_ **soft** \- and then there had been fear in his nose and pack on the ground and mate speaking quiet-quiet because he could not see through the red.

He had not meant to, but - there had been no one to tell him no.

He was alone in his head.

Silver twisted, and whined into Bunny's shoulder. Soft fur, strong muscle, hard bone. Good shoulder. He liked it. Wanted to bite it, but not in an eating way, in a -

He recoiled, but Bunny locked his arm around Silver's back and kept him clothes. "Bad," he said, the word tearing from his throat. "Space. Need."

Bunny frowned at him, but relaxed his hold. "Stay on the couch."

What was a -? Right. They sat on a couch. Silver pressed back against the other side of the couch, and then pressed his hands to his face. He listened. Better than struggle against things.

That was supposed to be a Jack problem!

Blood heat and bite-hold and no clothes. Mating was interesting, in its way, but nothing like a run through the forest with mist heavy on his fur, or driving intruders from his territory. Jack had always wanted to touch, to hold, to press mouths together and bodies together lower down.

Silver just thought, fun as it was during the act, mating was mostly an annoyance he could do without.

Then again... He lowered his hands, and studied Bunny. Bunny was his mate. Mates should be attracted to each other. Want to run together, play-fight together, curl up in a den together. Mating was in there somewhere, he supposed, though the idiot in Montana kept getting it wrong, as usual. Not what he should think about either, unless he wanted Bunny to stop him from going that way to kill an idiot.

If he started for the window, what would Bunny do? Would he grab him? Pin him down? Would he -

Silver punched himself in the nose. It was surprisingly easy to get a good angle.

Hands grabbed his wrists, and he snarled, lips peeled back. Tooth glared at him. "Why would you do that?" she demanded, getting _closer_ to his threat. "Are your teeth okay?"

Were his... what?

Bunny waved Tooth away from him, while Silver was still too busy puzzling over the comment to hit her. "You can't grab him right now," Bunny explained. Good mate. "This is Silver, Jack's wolf. Not Jack."

"Right, right, but his teeth -"

"They grow back." Tooth liked teeth. Silver showed her his, lips pulled back to the point his cheeks started to hurt. Humans had dumb, useless mouths. No good for biting.

For some reason, the sight of his teeth made her flutter and sigh. Silver stopped showing his teeth and looked over to Bunny, a confused whine building in his throat. But he didn't let it out, oh no, he wasn't weak, wasn't going to pretend weak in front of the prey - pack, _pack_. They were his pack and it was okay to not fight them. Better than okay.

"I want Jack back," he decided, and shifted until he could press against Bunny's side again.

It was hard to think. It was easier to think when Jack was there, but it was best to make Jack do all the thinking. He was human. He was good at it.

* * *

"So when you say problem," North said, his voice hushed. For once, he'd listened to the command to keep his voice down. He studied Silver, curled up and seemingly asleep, the faintest hint of red showing beneath his eyelashes. "You mean Silver is going insane."

"He talked, some." Bunny kept his voice from getting tight, annoyed, through sheer force of will. As long as he kept  his tone soothing, Silver didn't so much as twitch. If he tensed, or he began biting his words off with frustration... It'd been hard enough to talk Silver off North the first time. For whatever reason, Silver focused his aggressive outbursts on North the most, Tooth rarely, and Bunny and Sandy never. Aster figured he was safe, as Jack's mate, but Sandy?

Well, the Sandman was keeping his distance, that probably had something to do with it.

"What did he say?" North looked over at Tooth and Sandy. "And I hope you find useful things in books."

"Slow going. There aren't a lot of werewolves in India, so we don't have a lot of information about them." But Tooth was the only one able to read the different languages of that part of the world. Even Aster could only manage the most basic grasp of Hindi and Urdu, and if he'd known any words in Sanskrit he'd forgotten them a long time ago.

"On the other hand," Tooth added, squinting down at a scroll. "I can confirm badly written porn is not a modern invention." She set the scroll aside.

Sandy, with the rest of the books, waved one hand in dismissal. He had three books open, and appeared to be reading them simultaneously.

Aster supposed it wasn't nearly as intellectually challenging as monitoring a few hundred dreams all at once, or piloting a star, but it was an unusual sight, all the same.

"Not a lot. Just told me that Jack was gone from his mind, that he was alone, and that Jack comes back _after_ Silver's killed everything and gotten bored." He stroked a hand over Silver's hair. The werewolf shifted, until his head was pillowed on Aster's thigh. "That might be a problem."

"Yes, very few places where wanton destruction would not be noticed." North stiffened at Aster's expression. "If is what works, then is an option. But how long does killing everything last? Several days? Months? Worse?"

"Worse," Silver said, and shifted again. He pressed his mouth against Aster's thigh, very like a kiss, and then bit.

Aster squealed and kicked, which didn't dislodge Silver but did startle him. The werewolf let go after another, unnerving moment, and huddled at the far end of the couch. He looked confused, which seemed safe enough to leave alone, so Aster inspected the wound.

Or the lack of wound. Silver might have bitten, but it hadn't broken the skin. Highly unnerving, especially that spot - an inch or so under the muscle, there was a big vein running down to his foot there, and it was all too easy to imagine Silver tearing through and ripping the vein open. Probably not automatically lethal, Aster being a spirit now, but not good for his health.

"Sorry." Silver sounded disgruntled, but his expression was disturbingly blank. His eyes were red, pupils shrunk to near invisible points of black. "Should have not. Sorry."

"What..." Aster rubbed the bite spot. That was going to bruise, but that'd be all. "What was that, mate?"

Silver tilted his head, nothing like a human and everything like a wolf. "Mating." He snorted. "Leave to human. Dumb. Run better. Still bite-hold. Sorry."

Aster closed his mouth, before he started catching flies. "Gotcha," he managed.

Silver managed to contort his human body into a position better suited to a canine's bone structure, and appeared to fall asleep again.

"So," North said. "Do we need to worry about this, too?"

Aster clenched his eyes shut. "How about we take him out, fight that fearling, let him kill it, and hope that'll get Jack back somehow?"

"And if it doesn't?" Tooth asked.

Aster rubbed the bruise, and shook his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, sorry about the hiatus but between a major case of writer's block and a few other things, I just didn't have a chapter to post for a while there. It's still a bit iffy - I know where I want to get, but the path there is a bit... tricky. Oh well, I'll figure it out.
> 
> I'm also going to switch to posting once every two weeks - I have an original short story I'm trying to polish up for Ad Astra, the writer's convention, next month. Editing is hard and draining, especially when you've read your own work over seventeen times and just want to set it on FIRE now. And I just don't have the energy to churn out a weekly chapter for Wolfy AND edit, at least not right now. So, not exactly another hiatus, but fewer chapters per month.
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoyed!


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some violence, as expected, but heads up for some injuries.  
> Also, sorry if you were expecting a Silver POV or a Bunny POV. Neither of them were working for me.

A moonblade knife looked very much like a silver-plated one.

Nikolai tested the silver blade, twirling it between and over his fingers in a move mainly to test the weight and balance, not impress his pretty wife.

"You had better have good reason for needing my knives." Larisa perched on a corner of his desk, sweater off and revealing the tactical suit underneath. Good against slicing, piercing, and as breathable as plain cotton. It had been a pride and joy to make it for her, almost as delightful as their courtship dance where she did her utmost to kill him, and he did his utmost to win her heart.

The glock, however, offended him. Surely if his deadly lady thought of guns as toys, he should be able to make at least one. Alas, not yet, though once he had the knack for it he would do better for her.

"Our werewolf friend is getting worse, not better." The past day, his eyes had slipped to red, and stayed there. As of this morning, he did not speak at all, only growled and grunted. When his attention wandered away from Bunny - which it did not often do - it was usually directed towards one of the elves, or the yeti. Predatory and aggressive. His employees could take care of theirselves, but he did not like the thought of Silver going after any of them.

As for Silver's interest in Bunny... If not for the werewolf's obvious and continuing annoyance with himself, whenever his hands wandered, Nikolai would have worried. He _was_ worried, but not about that. He did hope that Jack himself had an interest in wandering hands, though he would think no further than that, as Bunny had a healthy interest in such things... And he really did not care to remember those not-drunk-enough conversations some centuries ago.

Centuries? Had it really been so long? Only two... well. Technology changed so quickly, he hadn't noticed. He would have to resume their old habit, though perhaps without the over sharing from before.

Larisa shifted, muscle flexing beneath her suit. Of course, he did have a wife now. He could always counter Bunny's slurred admirations and complaints with his own.

"You will not hurt him?" she asked, and he refocused his attention. "Jack's efforts over the past year alone -"

"I will not, unless there is no other choice. But someone must be willing to consider the option." Sandy would not. Possibly could not; lack of clear communication made it difficult to know how similar a former star pilot's morality and ethical code matched a human's... and how different it was. But Sandy had been continuously surprised by how vicious humans could be to each other, even close kin. If Silver lost what little control he had left, Sandy might just knock the wolf out... or he might be caught so by surprise, he could not react in time.

As for warning him beforehand... Sandy was not subtle. That was not such a bad thing in a fight, or going into one, but when dealing with friends? Making clear how much scrutiny Silver was under would not be helpful.

Tooth, meanwhile... Nikolai would talk to her only if it was absolutely necessary. Dealing with one friend lost and turned enemy had dented her very badly. A second would break her, and if she was not quite his sister, she was a close cousin. One did not do that to family.

Which was why he would keep Bunny in the dark. His friend was in love, and too worried about his mate to think straight. He would hate Nikolai, if the silver knife was used, but he would also be alive.

Nikolai had had many friends who were alive to hate him. He'd had practice.

Larisa's eyes were dark, and her expression grave, as if she'd watched those thoughts play out across his face. "So it falls to you to think the grim thoughts."

"Who better?" There had been other spirits, of holidays that fell around Christmas time. Not very nice spirits. Ones that had, eventually, come to Nikolai's attention... and quickly, his blades. Granted, their duties had then fallen to him, but he had not minded that overmuch.

He had been king of bandits before he became a toymaker and Guardian of Children. Violence was not the only tool at his hand, but it was the one he was most easy with.

Larisa drummed her fingers on the butt of her glock, and grinned. "You were never an assassin, my husband."

"So you had Phil make you bullets of silver." Clever, she was.

"The weight is off." She shrugged, and relaxed. "It would have to be close quarters, if I was to get any proper aiming done."

"It should not come to that." With luck, Jack would return once this fearling-werewolf was killed. And when Jack returned, they would do what they could to ensure Silver was never left alone in his head. Surely there were ways.

"I should be going with you."

No. Nikolai wrestled down his immediate rejection of the idea, and sat, outwardly calm. And still, Larisa watched him, amused and faintly regretful.

"I should," she repeated, and rested one hand over his. "I am your wife, and a wife's place is with her husband." She paused, so he could snort in amusement. "Even onto the battlefield, of course. But... my knees ache."

Nikolai turned his hand, so he could hold hers between both of his. Her knees ached, and her back hurt, and her knuckles had begun to swell with the first hints of arthritis. Cosmetics covered the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, though in truth, he liked those wrinkles. Even as he hated them, the sign his wife was getting old, there was a part of him that hoped... Mrs. Claus was always of a physical age to Mr. Claus, and he looked like a grandfather.

The thought of his wife, appearance softened to that of a stern, yet caring grandmother, one as quick to chide as to offer cookies... Ah, what a sight that would be.

Even if the cookies _would_ likely be poisoned.

"I will wear the tactical vest beneath my clothes," he promised. If his most deadly of ladies could not guard his back, he would wear armour, instead.

* * *

The wolf... was.

It sat. It breathed. It watched The Important One. The Center.

The wolf breathed. The wolf broke. Pieces falling off its mind. Bleeding. More lost.

The wolf... was. Alive. Hungry. Worried. Protective.

Mostly, the wolf was _angry_.

* * *

Words of wisdom had been spoken about doing the same thing twice, and expecting a different result. Mainly, that doing so was a form of insanity.

Nikolai did not believe this was a repeat of last time, however. Granted, they were once again walking through Jack's forest, keeping together more than last time, on the watch for fearling-werewolves. However, last time they had not realized the sheer threat their opponent held; they had expected a new spirit, perhaps another werewolf, and had gotten a monster that _caused_ the nightmares other monsters came out of.

This time, they were prepared for that. Bunny wore his armour and some Nikolai had pressed upon him; in addition to the coat that did as good a job as chain mail in protecting from slicing, Bunny now wore a proper neck guard and a wide leather belt that would at least slow down anyone trying to disembowel him. Three long knives, nearly long enough to be short swords instead, were sheathed and hung on that belt. Even the leather of the sheaths could not hide the glimmer of moonlight on metal, the clear sign of a moonblade.

Tooth had changed her ordinary garb, feathered tunic and trews that blended seamlessly into her own hide, and wore something a little more... traditional, she said. It was strange to Nikolai's eyes, all billowing fabrics that made her seem twice as wide as she actually was, but they hid a coat of close-fitting scale mail and leather trousers that had brass plates, each no bigger than a cookie, sewn to them wherever it would not foul movement. She carried one regular sword, and one moonblade duplicate, both for the moment sheathed. And he would not for the life of him face those knuckle-guards she wore on both hands, for from each knuckle sprouted a blade as long as her forefinger.

A punch with that would _hurt_.

Nikolai had done nothing but change his sabres for moonblade sabres, and though he wore a tactical vest, there was no sign of it beneath the layers of clothing necessary for comfort in the Arctic, and the heavy coat that proclaimed him both to be Santa, and was enchanted to stop everything but large calibre bullets. Larisa had finally tested it for him, several months after she'd stopped trying to kill him. The dummy had survived everything but the bazooka, so they had proclaimed the enchantments a success.

Only Sandy was unchanged from their last visit, though a moonblade was less effective in his hands than his own dreamsand. Though North did wish Sandy had accepted a knife, at least, it would have done no good. A weapon one could not and indeed, refused to use, was a weapon in your enemy's hands. Long experience had taught him that.

As for Jack... Instead of Jack, it was Silver. And the difference several days, almost a week and a half, had made in the werewolf was... worrying.

Nikolai kept a careful eye on the werewolf, even as he did his utmost to pay attention to his surroundings. They were deceptive, at the moment; if the shadows were a little darker than normal, the pathway was still bright and clear. There were no rotting logs, no strange mushrooms, and while there was a strong smell of rotting leaves, this _was_ a forest. Such was to be expected.

Silver's lack of grace and dead-eyed gaze was not expected. He had thought the werewolf would become... more, like the mortal wolves Nikolai had grown up dealing with. Even when standing still, those beasts had been more alive than Silver was now, loping along at Bunny's side.

He did not know what to make of it. But the life in Silver's eyes came back, if briefly, after each surge of violence. And the deader the gaze, the more likely that surge of violence was.

Nikolai shifted, until one hand hovered over the hilt of his _silver_ knife. He would sorrow until the end of his days if he had to use it on a friend... But he would if he had to.

Just ahead, Silver paused, head lifted and turned to one side. Without word or gesture, he began moving in that direction, faster than a walk, slower than a jog. It was easy enough to follow after, yet Nikolai was not the only one to keep several arm-lengths back. Only Bunny seemed comfortable with moving closer, though he almost went face-first into a tree. That incident, at least, encouraged the Pooka to watch where he was going, not just stare at Silver in concern.

They wound their way between the trees, their surroundings gradually - and then not so gradually - returning to the dank, dismal condition of their last visit. Things squelched underfoot, and Nikolai did not dare look down and check if it was only damp earth, or something worse.

The underbrush grew thicker, despite it being against nature, plants requiring light to grow. The bushes had thorns. The vines tangled around ankles. The ferns sheltered what looked like poisonous mushrooms. Nikolai shoved aside a surge of homesickness, and continued to watch for danger.

Silver growled, and stepped away from Bunny for the first time. His head lifted, very like a wolf scenting for prey.

"There," he growled, and it took Nikolai a moment to understand what had been said.

And then he was running, after Silver, who charged ahead like a single-minded fool.

Nikolai should know, he played the single-minded fool on the regular.

Tangling vines and clinging thorns were unable to stand up to a charging Russian, and quickly the others moved to follow him. Silver led them past a fetid-looking lake, towards the closest these lands came to a cliff-face. There were two caves that Nikolai could see, and the land around them was still bright, with healthy grass and natural sunlight.

The fearling-werewolf was unable to cross from its dank forest onto the bright earth. Silver slammed into it, shoving the creature up against the border so it flattened against the invisible force.

The fearling screamed, and spun. Silver twisted away from the claws, and then the rest of the Guardians arrived.

For all that they outnumbered the beast five to one, it was a difficult fight. Nikolai focused as he rarely had to, near all his attention on his blades and his target, with only the barest scraps left over for his companions.

He knew when he crossed onto the safe land, for the air smelt clean and his mind felt easy for the first time in hours.

He ducked one of Bunny's boomerangs - where had he kept them? - and ducked again when it bounced off the fearling-werewolf's skull.

He stepped between Sandy and the fearling-werewolf, blocking the blow with the sharp of his blade.

The fearling-werewolf howled and snarled, snapped and clawed. Their armour protected them from the worst of it, but Nikolai would not be the only one with heavy bruising on arms and ribs.

Tooth screamed a challenge and dove on the beast, moonblade sword bright. Her blade cut deep, but the beast caught her shoulder in its jaws and bit down.

There was a horrible sound, like a scream if all the pain and hate of the world could be distilled into one note. The fearling-beast shook its head, and Tooth was thrown away from it, into the clear half-circle of grass and sunlight. Her billowing shirt, which had seemed gray in the dim light, burst into brilliant silver.

"Cloth of silver, love?" Bunny asked, and pressed their advantage. The fearling was not so terribly burned about the mouth, but it was the most damage anyone had managed so far.

"Seemed fitting." Tooth clutched her shoulder. Her arm dangled, limp and useless. "Shoulder's dislocated, I can't -"

"No worries," Bunny gasped, and then with a twist, a strike -

The fearling-werewolf's head split down the middle.

Nikolai shouted, but the fearling-werewolf did not collapse as expected. Instead, while Bunny was still pulling his knife back, the two halves healed and shifted, now two-headed. One head snapped at Sandy when he got too close, the other grabbed Bunny's wrist and crunched down.

Bunny shrilled, blade dropping to the floor, as he reverted to an older fighting style. One that made use of the strong leg muscles and big hind claws of a Pooka.

Nikolai shifted to flank the fearling-werewolf, moonblade in one hand, silver blade in the other. Silver burned the beast, and that would certainly get its attention. He had to dodge errant kicks from the Pooka, whenever the beast twisted away from the blows. Already Bunny had shredded the fearling-beast's chest and shoulders with his hind claws, but it ignored his blows and continued to chew his wrist.

It did not ignore Nikolai's silver blade. It screamed, both heads thrown back in pain and rage, and then -

He was not sure what happened, not really. One moment, he was twisting the silver blade in the beast's haunch. The next, he was slumped at the base of a tree, head ringing like the bells of Notre Dame.

The fearling-werewolf swelled in size, doubling, tripling in height and width. Both jaws gaped wide, one dripping viscous Pooka blood. Its eyes blazed yellow, and if Nikolai felt no fear, he would admit to a twinge of doubt.

Bunny scrambled back from the beast, good hand clenched tight on his moonblade. Sandy moved in to cover him, streamers of golden sand weaving about his form.

But it was Silver, dead-eyed Silver, that threw the fearling-werewolf back on its heels.

There was a difference, Nikolai knew, between a fighter that could be offensive, but preferred to be defensive, and on that lived for the spray of blood and breaking of bones. Sandy was the first, for all his joking, preferring to attack at a distance when he had to, preferring to shield when given the choice.

Silver was the second.

He got in close, and began tearing handfuls of flesh away from the fearling-werewolf's shoulders.

The beast tore at him with both jaws, and with claws, but Silver ignored the blood streaming from his wounds and continued to tear. The beast roared, twisted, and swatted Silver away like an angry lion.

It dove at Bunny, jaws wide, but Nikolai wasn't watching, not that moment. There was something...

So he was the only one who saw it.

When Silver hit the tree.

When he bounced off, and landed on his feet.

When his eyes snapped open unnaturally fast.

The werewolf's eyes were a solid, burning blue.

Silver roared, and ice cracked across the ground and up the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I figure you all are going to be grumpy about the ending here - especially since, with the writer's convention in two weeks and my short story only partially edited, I'm probably going to have a gap of three weeks between this chapter and next one. Depends on how the editing goes and how much writing I'll need to do to cure my brain of mush-syndrome. (I am not an editor. That said, you gotta do what you gotta do.)


End file.
